Support our independent tech coverage. Chrome Unboxed is written by real people, for real people—not search algorithms. Join Chrome Unboxed Plus for just $2 a month to get an ad-free experience, access to our private Discord, and more. Learn more about membership here.
START FREE TRIAL (MONTHLY)START FREE TRIAL (ANNUAL)
After a few months of hiccups, delays and reorganization, Chrome OS updates finally appear to be back on track and the last two released have landed right on schedule. On top of that, Google is finally making a concerted effort to make release announcements official prior to the actually drop of the update. That’s great news but from time to time, updates will likely still roll out on a staggered schedule and some users are left wondering which version of Chrome OS is actually available for their Chromebooks. Developers do maintain a couple of websites that show the Stable, Beta, Developer and Canary versions of Chrome OS available for practically every Chrome device in existence. The downside? These websites are little more than tables that are populated by the actual update server. They can be very confusing if you don’t know what it is you’re looking for and frankly, they’re a bit of an eye sore. See for yourself.
Thankfully, there are awesome people out there that share a similar passion with us when it comes to Chrome OS. One such Chromie has taken it upon themselves to build a clean, beautiful website that aggregates the exact same server information into a searchable format that includes retail device names. Cros.tech isn’t affiliated with Chromium developers but instead is and effort of two developers that decided Chrome OS deserved better. That said, cros.tech is simple yet exponentially more useful than the Chromium developers’ rendition and it houses a very useful bonus feature. If you’re looking for a recovery image for a Chromebook or perhaps you’re building an image to boot to a non-Chrome OS device, you can grab those right here.
This is very useful if you want a specific device image to create a bootable live USB stick or perhaps build Chrome OS on an old PC you have around the house. Again, there isn’t really anything on this page that you won’t find on the developer sight but it is way more user-friendly and I promise you, this will be my go-to when I’m looking for updates or image downloads. You can find the snazzy little website at the link below. I tip my hat to the creator. This is a job well done and it is my hope that countless users will find cros.tech a great resource in the Chrome OS toolbox.
