Do you see it?
If you’re like many, the picture above immediately drew your attention to what could be one of the greatest UI updates in recent Chrome OS history. At some point last summer, Chrome OS launched the unified system tray that brought together the traditional desktop UI and material design elements of Android.
I was immediately a fan of the new look but one, small detail appeared to be overlooked in the new layout. The “clear all” notification seemingly disappeared after being a staple of the system tray for practically all of Chrome OS’ ten-year history.
Little did we know, the clear all button had not been removed. It was simply hiding at the bottom of the notification stack waiting to be revealed with a simple swipe up or scroll of the mouse wheel.
The placement seemed logical as it was clearly taking cues from the Android notification tray but over time, utilizing the elusive clear all button became an annoyance. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who felt this way.
The latest update to the Canary channel of Chrome OS has placed a second “clear all” button at the top of system notifications and it is visible as soon as you open up the tray. Here’s a closer look:
I know, this may feel like a minor aggravation but let’s look at this from a workflow perspective. With Chrome OS now housing two other app ecosystems, Linux and Android, notifications play a much bigger role than when we simply received Hangouts messages and web notifications on our Chromebooks.
For example, Android Messages is an integrated part of Chrome OS and those who use it to remove the distraction of picking up their mobile device constantly, text messages can pile up quickly. Seriously, take a look at your go-to messaging app. Most of us don’t realize how many messages we send on a daily basis and those notifications can stack up quickly.
Combine messages with notifications from Linux apps being installed, Android apps doing their thing and downloading the latest funny cat pics to show your friends, your system tray can become a wasteland of infinite +99 and more notifications in no time.
Again, this may be a minor thing but I would be comfortable in betting a lot of users will breathe a sigh of relief when the change hits the Stable channel. It is currently in Canary on version 76 but I would suspect this feature could move up the ladder faster than the OS version update and we could see it land in an incremental update in coming weeks if we’re lucky.
Soure: About Chromebooks
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