ChromeOS 150 rolls out with Gemini in Class Tools, Local PIN support, and more

ChromeOS 150 is rolling out to most eligible Chromebooks now, and Google has officially published the release notes; and while milestone releases often focus heavily on under-the-hood enterprise maintenance, this version packs some notable productivity and security upgrades for managed environments and education users. Here is a quick breakdown of all the newly shipped features and changes arriving with ChromeOS 150.

Classroom management gets powered by Gemini

The biggest highlight of this release centers around classroom focus and education management. With Gemini in Class Tools, educators gain powerful new ways to keep students locked into relevant learning materials during class time.

Teachers can now restrict student devices to Gemini’s Guided Learning mode to minimize distractions. Furthermore, this integration extends across Google Classroom experiences, allowing teachers to lock student screens to NotebookLM (Now Gemini Notebook) for research-heavy assignments, restrict test prep sessions, or prevent navigation beyond Google Search.

Local PIN and password controls for managed Chromebooks

For IT administrators, ChromeOS 150 introduces two new enterprise policies that enable local PIN and password authentication on managed devices. Admins can now configure specific complexity requirements to ensure local device authentication meets organizational security standards.

Alongside this, Google is executing an automatic migration for a small subset of managed Enterprise and Education users who added accounts and configured local PINs in late June 2026. These users will automatically revert back to standard online password authentication upon signing in to ChromeOS 150. Affected users will see a one-time informational screen, but no local files or profile data will be impacted.

End of support for Chrome Apps in Kiosk sessions

ChromeOS 150 marks the official end of the line for legacy Chrome Apps in Kiosk mode. Starting with the upcoming ChromeOS 151 release, Chrome apps will completely stop functioning in Kiosk sessions.

If your organization relies on Kiosk mode, now is the time to transition those workflows to the now-standard PWA. Google does note that force-installed Chrome apps in Managed Guest Sessions (MGS) and standard user sessions will continue to work normally for now.

Unmanaged Isolated Web Apps (IWAs) & better re-authentication

Rounding out the technical updates, ChromeOS 150 now allows users to manually install Isolated Web Apps (IWAs), provided administrators have enabled the new IsolatedWebAppUserInstallationEnabled policy in the Google Admin console under Devices > Chrome > Apps & Extensions > User app settings.

Additionally, Google has optimized the checks and fetches for token handles stored against user accounts. This significantly improves the overall reliability of login re-authentication, leading to far fewer unexpected re-authentication prompts on the login screen.

A quick peek at what’s coming next

In addition to what shipped today, the release notes give us a preview of several changes coming down the pipeline. Accessibility is getting a boost with a new inverted color mouse cursor option that keeps content visible underneath an enlarged pointer.

On the hardware side, starting in ChromeOS 151, updates will begin being blocked for non-certified Flex devices using legacy graphics hardware, specifically Intel and AMD graphics from 2010 and older, or Nvidia graphics from 2014 and older.

Finally, starting with ChromeOS 154, ChromeOS version numbers will begin incrementing by two every four weeks to better align release versioning with the Chrome browser’s accelerated schedule.