Release notes for ChromeOS 132 reveal some fun changes to the OS

ChromeOS 132 actually arrived about a week ago, but there were no official release notes available at the time. I did my best to look for new features, but I didn’t stumble upon any that were clearly new. Thanks to release notes over in the Chromebook Support Forum, we now know what’s expected in this latest version.

As the ChromeOS team now does with regularity, they made it clear that these features would be arriving progressively with ChromeOS 132, and that is precisely the reason we missed most of these on our initial inspection. Put plainly, I’m still not seeing most of these new features on the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, so without these release notes, there’s no way we could have just stumbled across them.

Hopefully they all show up before too long and get to users before the next update to ChromeOS 133 scheduled for February 18th. I’ve seen some of these features in the Developer Channel already, so I know they are definitely close to launch; so if you’ve already updated to 132 and don’t see much changed, hang on for a bit. New features should be on the way. Here’s what’s new.

• New onboarding checklist: I actually came across this in the Developer Channel last week and had a post queued up to talk about it. Since it isn’t technically here, I’ll still put that out later this week to show you what this new feature is all about. Simply put, users will now get a quick checklist of things to set up when first logging into their Chromebook. Printer setup, accessory preferences and more are shown, and its a handy way to find your way around the OS off the start.
• Rounded corners for windows: This one shouldn’t take much explaining, and I wrote a whole post about it when it showed up in the Developer Channel last month. With rounded window corners, the whole OS really does take on a more modern look, and I absolutely love it.
• Face Controlled mouse input: You may recall that we had an early look at face controls back in May of 2024 at the spring Chromebook Showcase. This tool has come a long way, and it is one of the features ready to roll in ChromeOS 132. Simply head to Settings > Accessibility > Face Control and you can turn the feature on and adjust the sensitivity for cursor moments and set up gestures for clicks.
• Turn off your touchpad: In another great accessibility move, you can now turn off your touchpad altogether or have it automatically shut off when an external mouse is plugged in. For a myriad of reasons, this could be helpful, and I’m glad to see it arrive.
• Password manager biometric authentication: While not live for me yet, your Chromebook’s biometrics (fingerprint scanner) will be able to be utilized by Chrome’s password manager to verify you are who you say you are before gaining access to auto-filled passwords on your device. I love this and hope it works with devices that utilize PINs as well.
• Apps and games are leaving the Explore app: Remember the whole “App Mall” thing? It’s still an option at the https://discover.apps.chrome URL, and it seems this will now take over for the apps and games section in the current Explore app you see when you first log into a Chromebook. For me, this change is yet to happen, but I’m hoping that when it does, the App Mall is surfaced as a PWA in the early stages of the Chromebook experience.
• Data migration for graduating students: Finally, from ChromeOS 132 on, a new content transfer tool will become available to guide graduates away from EDU-managed accounts to personal accounts with Google’s Takeout Transfer process. They’ll be able to keep their Docs, Sheets, Slides and Gmail content and be able to move it all to their personal Google account of choice.

That’s a lot for an update that didn’t seem to have anything of note in it, right? Again, much of this isn’t actually there to try just yet, but I’m hoping the ChromeOS team makes good on the promise that these features are ready for ChromeOS 132 and that we’ll see them rolling out in the next week or so. We’re still right at 4 weeks away from the next update, so there’s definitely time for all of this to get delivered before ChromeOS 133 arrives.