ChromeOS 128 is available right on time and rolling out now

The ChromeOS team isn’t wasting any time with ChromeOS 128 and it is rolling out as we speak – right on time. Like we’ve seen for the past handful of updates, the release notes aren’t quite ready just yet, so I’ve been pecking around a bit this morning to see what – if anything – has changed with the introduction of the newest version of the OS.

While I’m 100% certain some things have been added under the hood, so far there isn’t much change readily apparent to me. Again, let me stress the fact that there are definitely things that have been added that I’ve not stumbled on just yet, but until I happen across them, it’s just hard to find changes without some update notes from the team.

One HUGE change that I’m loving

I’m going to explore this new change a bit more before writing an entire piece around it, but there is a definite update to the split-screen window resizing in ChromeOS 128. For many, many years this feature has looked and behaved the exact same way, but those days are now behind us.

Instead of the pop-up handle that used to appear when you hover the border between two snapped windows, the entire border is now actionable and can be used to drag the size of both windows at once. On top of that, the animation and way that things resize is far better and smoother than before, too. I can’t quite put my finger on what has changed just yet, but it looks and feels great to use.

I’m also seeing the Read Aloud feature arriving for me in this update as well. It technically should have made it in ChromeOS 127, but it never worked without a flag for me. With 128, it is working right out of the box in Reader Mode via Chrome’s Side Panel. If you don’t have it pinned, simply hit the 3-dot menu > More tools > Reading Mode and you’ll have the chance to pin it to your top bar in Chrome and also hit the play button to activate the new Read Aloud feature.

For now, I don’t see a ton of differences in ChromeOS 128 outside of these couple things. We do expect some larger changes for the early October update, so seeing ChromeOS 128 be a smaller upgrade isn’t surprising. As long as some bugs were smashed, security was hardened a bit, and we have a couple fun, new features, I think we can all be happy with it. But I’ll bet we’ll have more to check out once those release notes show up.