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In Google’s efforts to bring ChromeOS to the masses, we have seen many improvements over time that have made the experience feel more polished and have brought features previously only seen on “fully-fledged” operating systems like Windows and macOS. One of these features, as discovered by Android Police, is the ability to pin a floating window so it can stay in the foreground.
The feature is only available in the experimental Canary Channel and by enabling the #cros-labs-float-window flag. Once enabled you will be able to see a pin on the top right of your open windows. Clicking it will effectively “pin” that app wherever you place it on your screen and will keep that app in the foreground while you interact with other apps back and forth.
This can be a very helpful feature if in your normal workflow there is an application that demands more of your time and needs to be referred back to often. AP provided the below additional information on how the feature is currently working:
While the functionality itself works as expected, it feels like the interface isn’t quite fully fleshed out yet, as there are currently no visual cues (like the pin icon graying out or taking a slanted appearance) to show that a window’s in a pinned or unpinned state. It seems likely that might be added in a future build.
This is one of those features that was not on my wishlist, but now that I know about it, I want it and I want it now. I can see myself pinning Spotify or even Google Keep so I can refer back to my notes as I work. Little details and improvements such as this one, is what drew me to ChromeOS in the first place, and I am very glad to see this is still the trend.
