One of the biggest missing features in Googlebook’s Chrome browser is getting fixed

As we have continued living with and working from Googlebooks over the past two weeks, the platform has delivered some genuinely fantastic surprises. Just yesterday, I praised how native Android work profiles finally eliminate account switching chaos, and earlier this week we saw Chrome 155 unlock windowed web app installs for any website – an update I’m personally still waiting on.

Yet for all that forward momentum, early adopters and power users have run headfirst into a glaring, bewildering omission inside Google’s flagship browser: Chrome on Googlebook OS currently does not support multiple user profiles. If you rely on separate browser personas to keep your daily digital life organized, its absence feels like stepping back into the stone age. Fortunately, Google has officially confirmed that a fix is actively on the way.

The bummer of a single-profile browser on a laptop

If you use Chrome on ChromeOS, macOS, or Windows, profile switching is pure muscle memory. Tapping that circular avatar in the top-right corner lets you effortlessly jump between completely isolated browsing worlds: distinct sets of bookmarks, separate password autofill vaults, independent history, and dedicated extension setups. For freelancers managing multiple clients or anyone separating personal web research from work, it is an indispensable daily tool.

On Googlebook OS today, that entire mechanism is missing. While you can add multiple Google accounts to your machine at the system level, opening Chrome locks you into a single browsing identity. If you want to check a second personal Gmail account or access a client’s cloud dashboard without logging out of your primary session, you don’t really have too many options.

For a platform billing itself as the future of Google computing, launching a $1,000 laptop with a browser that cannot swap profiles felt like an unforced error.

Why this happened in the transition to Android

To understand why this feature went missing, you have to look under the hood. While the Chrome browser on Googlebook OS looks and feels like a genuine desktop implementation, its foundational plumbing is still tied to the Android build of Chrome, adapted to run with extension support, freeform windowing, desktop user-agent strings, and keyboard shortcuts.

On Android smartphones and tablets, Chrome has historically operated under a single-user paradigm, tying browsing data directly to whichever account is signed into the device. Desktop Chrome on Windows, Mac, and ChromeOS, by contrast, was architected around separate local profile directories that can run concurrently in side-by-side windows. Merging those two codebases for launch unfortunately meant that full desktop profile switching did not make the cut for day one.

Google’s official confirmation that a fix is coming

Thankfully, Google is well aware of the frustration and has no intention of leaving power users stranded. Responding to complaints in an r/Googlebook community thread, Google’s Mishaal Rahman directly addressed the missing feature:

The team is working on updates to Chrome on Googlebook OS. For instance, while Chrome on Googlebook OS does not currently support multiple profiles, this will come in a future update.

Mishaal clarified that while users can link multiple Google accounts to their hardware today, native profile switching inside the browser itself requires dedicated platform plumbing that the team is actively building out for an upcoming software release.

Googlebook OS is clearly undergoing the same rapid growing pains we observed during our first impressions with the hardware. While launching without Chrome profile switching was a frustrating blind spot, knowing that the Chrome engineering team has prioritized the upgrade means one of the platform’s biggest friction points will soon be behind us. And it can’t come too soon.