First Look: ChromeOS App Mall unifies app discovery for Chromebooks

We’ve been on the lookout for the arrival of the ChromeOS App Mall for a few months now. First discovered back in March, the new App Mall is arriving to do one, simple task: put the apps users want in one place to be found on a Chromebook.

While we have access to web apps, PWAs, Android apps and Linux apps on Chromebooks, it’s not always clear how to go about finding them. Should you install the web version or the Play Store version? Which Play Store apps install a PWA versus an Android app? Where should you go to find the right one for you?

The new App Mall should help clarify things a bit in that regard, giving the ChromeOS team a place to feature great apps that work well with Chromebooks and general users a centralized location to find them. It’s been a long time coming, and the iteration we’re seeing today is likely just the first step in this entire process. But it’s pretty cool to see it in action.

Interesting features for the App Mall

There are a few things about this new addition to ChromeOS that I already love. Before we hop into that, however, do note that this is all happening in the Canary Channel of ChromeOS 126 with the chrome://flags/#cros-mall flag enabled. If you find yourself in Canary and flip on this flag, you’ll immediately see the new App Mall icon pinned to your shelf and in your app launcher.

Opening it up, the App Mall feels on brand and reminds me of the long-standing Explore app that has been on Chromebooks for some time now. Things are separated into Search, Home, Apps and Games, and clicking on each of these menu items takes you where you’d expect to go.

The real magic happens when you find an app you want to check out. As you can see in the quick video above, you get a full app description with photos and the ability to choose where to get that app. For some, the Play Store is the only option. Others, however, have more options, and a drop down gives you some choices.

While the Play Store install simply opens the Play Store for the process, there’s a really interesting new way that web apps and PWAs install that makes this entire thing worth it. Again, you can see it in the video above, but it’s awesome to see PWAs being granted a true install pop-up instead of forcing users to go to Chrome and click through a few steps. I love it, and I think it could end up making users far more comfortable “installing” web apps.

And if that is the main win with the App Mall, I’m totally on board. The majority of apps I use on a Chromebook are web-based, so I tell people all the time that you can get most of the things you want done on a Chromebook using just the power of the web. The App Mall will only further this cause, and I’m excited to actually see it up and running. There are a few rough edges, but I’d say we could expect to see this launch sooner than later for sure. And it’s only going to be a positive, helpful tool when it does.