Why I’m hopeful the ChromeOS/Android merger will finally bring browser profiles to Chromebooks

When I use the MacBook that we have around for video editing, I live and die by browser profiles. I have one for my personal life with all my personal bookmarks, credit cards, and history. I have another for Chrome Unboxed with our work-related bookmarks, the business credit card, and specific extensions. All told, I juggle seven different profiles, often with multiple Chrome instances open at the same time, allowing me to easily switch between tasks. Each one is a perfectly isolated, siloed experience. But when I jump over to a Chromebook, this entire workflow completely breaks down. And to this day, it remains my single biggest frustration with the platform.

Yes, ChromeOS has “fast account switching,” but let’s be honest: it’s not the same thing. It’s a clunky multi-account sign-in that mashes all your accounts together in one browser instance. It’s a workaround I’ve dealt with for years, but for a short, glorious time, we actually had a true solution: LaCrOS.

The rise and fall of LaCrOS

LaCrOS, the experiment that decoupled the Chrome browser from the OS, had one fantastic side effect: it enabled true, independent browser profiles, just like on Mac and Windows. I, and many power users like our friend John Sowash, came to rely on it to get real work done.

But then, Google cancelled the project. John, who manages a dozen Google Admin consoles for schools, called the cancellation “devastating” because it was the only sustainable solution for his workflow.

It felt like a step backward at the time, but it was their reasoning for the cancellation that is now the source of my renewed optimism. Google’s official statement said they were ending the experiment to “refocus our efforts on achieving similar objectives with ChromeOS embracing portions of the Android stack.”

Why the merger is our best hope

And this part is the key. The reason ChromeOS has never had proper profiles is that the browser and the operating system are fundamentally one and the same. The user you are logged into at the OS level is the user profile for the browser. But now, as Google executives confirmed last month, the new platform (coming next year) will be “the ChromeOS experience and re-baselining the technology underneath it on Android.”

In this new world, the Chrome browser will no longer be the OS. It will be an application—a very important one, but an application nonetheless—running on top of an Android foundation. Just like Chrome on Mac, Windows, or even the Linux version that John Sowash found as a workaround, it will be a separate entity.

This change theoretically removes the massive technical barrier that has prevented true, multi-profile support on ChromeOS for the last decade. If the browser is just an app, there is no logical reason it can’t support the same isolated profile-switching feature we’ve had on every other major desktop platform for years.

We still have to wait and see, but I am more hopeful than ever. This merger isn’t just about faster updates or better AI integration; it’s our best chance to finally fix the single most frustrating productivity bottleneck for power users on ChromeOS. And I, for one, can’t wait!