Correction: Fill and Center options appear for local ‘My images’. I stated in the article below that both features were absent.
Just weeks ago, we discussed the new and improved Wallpaper picker experience that Chromebook users would soon be able to enjoy. While it is only currently usable when enabled by a developer flag in Chrome, it is a sight to behold. Yes, it’s relatively simple, but gone are the left-hand sidebar categories for wallpapers and in their place is a grid layout for all of the additional categories Google has added over the past year. Honestly, it’s much more user-friendly.
As it nears completion and a full release, it recently cleaned up nicely on the Canary channel of the OS. The last time I mentioned this, I said that the only thing really missing was an option to refresh your wallpaper automatically every 24-hours. Well, that’s finally been implemented over this past week! You can see from the images below that a new ‘Change daily’ option now appears at the top of the application within a category you visit. It doesn’t show on the homepage of the app, but that’s understandable, I suppose.
Once you toggle the option, it shows a ‘Refresh’ button for manually cycling through the available wallpapers in said category, and an option to toggle ‘Change daily’ off again. Again, it’s simple but effective. I wasn’t expecting anything fancy with this, and it’s right on schedule. I would, however, like to see the development team add new features in while they have this opportunity.
Creating a system web app for the wallpaper experience seems like a good time to consider adding animated wallpapers or allowing users to at least choose .GIF files for their background instead of static .jpg or .png images! I know, it’s a pipe dream, but there used to be a Chrome extension that did this before it was yanked from the Web Store.
Another option I’m not yet seeing here is the ability to use wallpapers as fill, stretch, or cropped, but it’s likely on its way before everyone starts using the new app. I’m sure there are other things I’m forgetting here too, but that’s where you come in – I want to know what, if anything, you’d like to see from the new experience before or after it rolls out. Is there something that the current wallpaper app just doesn’t do that would be modern or a nice-to-have? Let me know in the comments below!
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