Last week, 9to5Google’s Kyle Bradshaw unearthed a new feature in the works that could eventually allow users to mirror your phone’s display to your Chromebook. In digging a little deeper, it appears that ‘eche’ will open a new window for interacting with notifications from the new Phone Hub interface that is headed to Chrome OS in the near future. This feature will work via an in-built SWA or system web app and will essentially click the notification that was originally triggered on your phone and then, mirror that specific app in some sort of pop-up window on your Chrome OS desktop.
Thanks to Mr. Bradshaw’s ability to astutely dissect commits, we know that ‘eche’ will transmit the mirroring video back and forth between devices utilizing WebRTC technology (the same technology used by Google Duo). The resulting pop-up window is slated to be a default dimension of 480×640 and unlike most PWAs and SWAs, ‘eche’ will not be resizeable. The latest update to the Canary Channel of Chrome OS has added the use flag for ‘eche’ but enabling it does nothing at this point.
Not that there was any real question as to the purpose behind ‘eche’ but I overlooked a small commit that gives us a clear look at the feature’s icon. This icon decently represents the fact that ‘eche’ will indeed be used to mirror your phone to your Chromebook. Take a look.
Based on commits, the ‘eche’ feature should be baked directly into the Phone Hub center. One particular commit actually hides the SWA from the apps list and prevents it from being searchable in the app launcher. It is possible that ‘eche’ could be disabled via the Phone Hub but I feel like it is simply going to be another piece of the Phone Hub system integration. We’ll keep an eye on this flag to see when it may actually go live. I’m anxious to see how it looks and how you can interact with it.
