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Announced at CES 2024 in an official capacity (after leaking a bit prior), Google’s new collaboration with Samsung for Quick Share is not just beginning to show up on Pixel phones; it is arriving a bit early on Chromebooks, too. After seeing the news that the transition from Nearby Share to Quick Share had begun for Pixels, I was curious to see if there was a flag already hiding in ChromeOS that would flip the switch for Chromebooks as well.
And, as luck would have it, as soon as I opened my Quick Settings panel on the Acer Chromebook Plus 515, I noticed the Nearby Share panel had been swapped to a new Quick Share panel instead. I don’t have any flags turned on that would enable this, so it is clearly something that exists already in ChromeOS 122 (currently in the Developer Channel).
Coming to a Chromebook near you?
I tested one other device that is in the Beta Channel and it is still displaying as ‘Nearby Share’, so this hasn’t made it down to ChromeOS 121 just yet. But I think it definitely could. After all, this isn’t a new feature, really, as much as it is a rebrand. There may be some stuff Samsung has offered in their Quick Share protocol that could make this new version of Nearby Share better, but under the hood it isn’t as if Google is having to reinvent the wheel.
The new Self Share feature still works, too, meaning I can use the Nearby Share on my Galaxy Z Fold 5 along with my Chromebook in Developer Channel to quickly send files back and forth with ease – even if the whole thing falls under the new ‘Quick Share’ label now on my Chromebook.
So, if it is all still working as intended, there’s a slight chance we could see Google go ahead and push this small paint job down to the Stable Channel of ChromeOS 121 when it releases next week. Whether they will or not is unclear, but the fact that everything already works out of the box and all that needed adjusting was a few titles and a couple icons tells me they could roll this out in the next major ChromeOS update with ease. We’ll know soon enough!
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