ChromeOS 132 is here for many, but you may not even notice the update

Basically on time, ChromeOS 132 is now rolling out to users. So far, it doesn’t appear that this one is ready across the board by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m seeing quite a few older, small-core Intel devices (think N3500, N4000, etc.) still not getting this latest version just yet.

ChromeOS 132 was scheduled for a January 14th delivery, so we’re not too far off the expected time frame for this one. While we’re not sure what is effecting this latest build to make it troublesome for those older Intel-powered Chromebooks, I’m sure the team will sort it out in the next few days as they always do.

Bugs and security updates

No news is supposed to be good news, right? If that holds, this update is 100% good news! Thus far, I’ve been completely unable to find even a hint of any new or updated features, though I’m sure there’s something new in here. Right?

Well, maybe not. We should see official release notes in the next few days, but I’ve clicked around in settings, customization features, productivity feature and I’ve literally not seen a single thing that would clue me in that I moved from ChromeOS 131 to ChromeOS 132.

There are always bugs to squash and security holes to patch, and I’m certain those have once again been addressed; but we may be moving into a new time with ChromeOS where the big, splashy, feature-packed updates get a bit more few and far between. As the OS continues to mature, that’s not shocking at all.

We all know the move to the Android Kernel is underway, and when that shift happens, it will be a massive event. But until it does, I’m beginning to wonder how many large features we’ll see added to Chromebooks along the way as we wait. While I think things like major AI features will still be introduced around the time of Google’s Chromebook events, you have to assume that they would like to get this kernel stuff sorted before making too many big, over-arching changes to the OS.

That’s at least been the feeling I’m getting with the past few ChromeOS updates. The October ChromeOS 129 update was HUGE, but it’s been a real trickle of new features since then. By the time ChromeOS 132 arrives in February, it will have been over 4 months since we got any big changes for our Chromebooks, and it really does feel like a new pattern is beginning to emerge, here.

I’ll wait for the official release notes and I’m hoping there are a couple new features hiding under the hood that will be worth paying attention to. For now, however, I think we might be in for a few more low-key updates that fix things quietly, secure things subtly, and aren’t cause for much fanfare overall.