ChromeOS 130 touts yet another vaporware feature with multi-calendar

Right before the absolute largest bombshell that could have dropped in the Chromebook world hit me smack-dab in the face yesterday, I was sitting here at my desk, answering questions in our Chrome Unboxed Plus community about a feature that was supposed to ship in ChromeOS 127, never showed, and was re-introduced for ChromeOS 130: multi-calendar support in the shelf.

The reason I was answering questions is the fact that this incredibly helpful feature still isn’t actually here for ChromeOS 130. After having it promised a few version back, waiting as it never actually showed up, and then having it once again falsely promised to us for ChromeOS 130, I’m incredibly disappointed by the ChromeOS team’s handing of this particular feature.

My biggest gripe is the fact that it is genuinely helpful for anyone using multiple calendars. I can’t stress enough how frustrating it is when I update ChromeOS or switch Chromebooks and it’s not there until I enable the flag. And the process of flipping on the flag isn’t even simple anymore! Again, this is a feature that should have been out months ago, and the team decided for some reason to remove the flag that at least made it simple for us to turn it on.

So now, I have to “unexpire” ChromeOS 128 flags (yes, the flag has even been gone for the past two OS updates), restart my device, enable the multi-calendar flag, and restart again before I can use this feature that was announced back in June with ChromeOS 126. What is going on??

The most maddening part? If they would just tell us that there’s an issue and that they are kicking the can down the road a bit, no one would be that frustrated. Bring the flag back to the current release, let us flip it on if we want, and announce it when it is actually ready.

As it stands now, we’ve been told this feature is available for ChromeOS 126, ChromeOS 129, and now in ChromeOS 130. In total, 5 updates have happened that should have included this new feature, and it still hasn’t actually arrived. Again, no one would be very upset if it wasn’t touted as a new feature in the official release notes, but it has been repeatedly. Google needs to flat-out do better on this.