“Welcome Recap” in ChromeOS 129 is a productivity game-changer

Yesterday, I hopped over to the Developer Channel of ChromeOS 129 and it didn’t take long for me to find a pretty big change in the overview mode that Google is prepping. You can read the post about that, but in a nutshell, the new overview mode has a bold, new look and is being prepped to deliver some suggested apps and files at the bottom to help you out a bit when multitasking.

Another feature being built into this view, however, didn’t show itself until much later in the day when I needed to restart my Chromebook to enable a few experimental flags. After the restart, my device launched into the same, new overview mode with a prompt to get right back into the things I was last working on. I was interested for sure.

Welcome Recap is powerful

I do need to note that at this point, my expectations were low. I didn’t really think all my stuff would return right where I left things, much less with all the windows in the exact position I left them in. And yet, that’s exactly what happened.

Logged-in sites returned exactly as I had them, my windows were all arranged on my extended display just as they were before I shut things down, and within a matter of seconds, I was right back to where I was before a complete and total reset of the OS.

And while I’m plenty excited to have a feature like this for the times I need to restart my device, the ramifications go way beyond that. I tend to use two Chromebooks at once: one on the desk (usually for review) and one in the bag that goes home with me. I can now imagine Welcome Recap allowing me to walk away from my desk, go remote, open my other Chromebook, and pick up right where I left off.

I’m not in a spot to test this out at the moment, but we heard rumblings of a ‘Floating Workspace’ last year, and this Welcome Recap could 100% be the way ChromeOS delivers this feature moving forward. I’ll be testing with some other devices the moment I can to see if this new feature works on a device-to-device basis, but even if it doesn’t at the moment, I could see this ability growing out of this feature in the near future.

For now, however, I can tell you that Welcome Recap is a big deal even if it only works on a single device at a time. Being able to simply shut down my Chromebook to conserve battery and being confident that my entire setup can be brought back at the click of a button is a great feeling. It’s already been so helpful that I’m considering staying in the Developer Channel for the time being so I don’t have to go back to using ChromeOS without it. Here’s hoping it arrives in early October with ChromeOS 129!