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We’ve talked about VPN support and Chrome OS in general in both videos and posts in the past. The general idea behind a VPN is the addition of a bit more privacy when online whether home or out and about. This is achieved through an app or extension encrypting your data and then routing your connection through a server and hiding your online actions.
There are tons of VPNs out there, and we’re not here to tell you which one to use. At Chrome Unboxed, we perfer NordVPN (and for full disclosure, we’re affiliates with them as well) for the ease of setup and speed of the service, but I’m not here to talk you into one VPN over another.
Instead, I want to talk about how your VPN of choice will soon begin working on your Linux Apps on Chrome OS too!
Coming in what looks like Chrome 76, this feature is actually already live in the Developer and Canary Channels of Chrome OS. Once this is implemented across Chrome OS in the Stable Channel, anyone who chooses to use Linux apps along with a VPN on the Chrome OS side of things will also have all their activity protected in those Linux containers in addition to the Chrome OS and Android portions of the OS.
In the past, we talked through the differences in VPN support for Chrome extensions and Android apps, but that doesn’t apply here. For Chrome OS in general, we’d suggest using the Android app for whichever VPN you choose since the app will cover your Chrome OS activity and any Android app activity as well.
For Linux apps, however, an Android VPN app or a Chrome VPN Extension will work just fine. So, if you happen to be a user who doesn’t ever use Android on your Chromebook but have Linux apps up and running, you can use your VPN’s Chrome Extension and have all your Linux containers covered. We tested this out for ourselves and can verify that both the Android version of NordVPN and the Chrome Extension both worked to re-route the IP address in a Linux instance of the Chromium browser.
We’ll be keeping an eye out for this to move down to Stable Channel and will update when we see it live for everyone, but getting this up and running couldn’t have been a small feat for the Chromium team, so we’re excited to already see the feature showing up in certain channels. Here’s hoping we see this in Stable Channel sooner than later!
