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Chrome OS 62 has been out for about a week and we saw a pretty wide rollout across the board. As most updates tend to go, this one was rolled out over a couple days to most devices across the board. If you still haven’t seen it, it could still be a few days.
Probably the most notable update included is the fix for the staggering Krack vulnerability that was uncovered in October that affects both devices and routers, giving hackers some pretty scary access to your devices and info.
While this fix won’t cover your router, it does fix the existing issue in Chrome OS, so that’s at least a step in the right direction. You can use your Chromebook with the knowledge that you are protected. Again, I can’t emphasize this enough: this will protect you and your Chromebook, but your home, work, public routers can still be affected, so be aware of what devices you are using to access the internet and where. There’s a great post at Tech Crunch that covers what the Krack vulnerability is and how to keep yourself protected. Knowing what it is can assuage fears and knowing that the best fix is getting the patch for all your wireless stuff. This update for Chromebooks is that step.
What Else?
The update brought a few other things along for the ride as well. First, there are newly-styled notifications. Not really a game-changing update, but these notifications clean up the look of Chrome OS’ notifications tray and give some symmetry to the overall look of both Android and Chrome notifications.
Second, there is an update for legacy Android apps in tablet mode. As I didn’t test this thoroughly before the update, I can’t definitively say exactly what has changed. I do know, however, that running Monument Valley in tablet mode would not render full screen before. Now, when I hit the expand button, the app fills the whole screen. As we await the ability to run split-screen apps in tablet mode, this at least feels like a nice fix for the time being. Seeing small phone-sized apps in tablet mode simply felt odd and broken.
Lastly, we have some enhanced touch functions for the files app. Multi-select and drag/drop works better in tablet mode now.
Unfortunately, there have been some issues with the Play Store and devices with Chrome OS 62 showing up as uncertified. The issue is affecting everyone on 62 and we are waiting for Google to respond and/or just issue a fix for the issue. You can read more about that over here in Gabriel’s article.
There are some other technical updates that are on-board as well, but I honestly don’t know enough about them to fully understand or talk about them. Some of our more technically versed commenters might be able to shed some light on those, so I’ll link to the official Google update post here and leave the rest of this post to the comments that are sure to come.
