Virtual Desk Templates will allow you to launch dedicated apps and workspaces with ease

Virtual Desks in Chrome OS are extremely useful. Having the ability to organize your windows and apps into various workspaces means a more collected and less chaotic day for those who manage multiple projects or personas. Some users prefer this method over multi-sign in, and I can’t blame them. While I don’t like switching between desks too frequently, I get it.

I can see some limitations with them though – you have eight desks at max, and unfortunately, these are shared between users who are signed into multiple accounts simultaneously. A new feature could add some flexibility to how desks work though. First discovered by Chrome Story, a new chromium repository commit reveals that the developers are working on something called “Desk Templates”.

Desk Templates: Expose feature flag to chrome://flags

Chromium Repository

These templates will soon be available as a developer flag, and will likely act exactly as you would expect. Selecting a “template” will launch a set of virtual desks and any saved windows or apps that were sorted into them before you closed them out. A streamlined workflow will greatly improve how attractive these will be for Chromebook owners.

At this time, there are no details on where the templates menu will appear or how this feature will work beyond what we’ve already discussed, but my guess is that clicking the three dots ‘more’ menu at the top-right of the “Bento bar” or overview mode will reveal new settings once it releases. We’ll let you know when more information shows up on this feature, so watch this spot! In the meantime, I’m interested in knowing if you’d find such a feature useful or interesting.

Just because I’ve fallen away from using Virtual Desks as much, doesn’t mean that they’re not useful. I just want to see them become more functional and customized. Templates seem to seek to solve some of the issues I’ve had, but my hope is that multi-user login provides each signed-in Google Account with their own desks and that the desks of the primary user are not shown on all accounts instead as they currently are.