Chrome OS version 68 is finally rolling out to a much wider assortment of devices following an apparent hiccup in last week’s deployment that left many users disappointed. More directly, although the update did begin to hit various Chromebooks after the Wednesday announcement was made, a substantial number of those who expected to receive it did not. Google hasn’t provided any details with regard to how that happened and that’s not necessarily surprising since rollouts tend to take some time. However, there doesn’t appear to have been any pattern to which devices received the update and that may or may not indicate an issue in some aspect of the rollout itself. In the meantime, the update has officially been pushed to the majority of devices expected to receive it now. Users can manually check for the update by navigating to the settings app on their Chrome OS device, clicking or tapping the three-bar menu at the top-left-hand side, and then by scrolling down to “About Chrome OS.” A large “Check for updates” button can be clicked or tapped on the subsequent page.
With regard to the contents of the update, Chrome 68 adds several user-facing changes and a lot of updates to the system’s accessibility features. Starting with the latter of those, ChromeVox can now be enabled or disabled using the hardware volume keys found on Chrome tablets and convertibles. Tying directly into that, touch or stylus can be used to select text for Chrome OS’s Select to Speak screen reading feature and a new shortcut key has been incorporated to assist with that. Users with the feature enabled can now highlight text and then press the Search and ‘s’ keys to have that text read aloud. Settings related to display size have also been added, as well as new shortcuts for accessing screen magnifier tools. Other under-the-hood changes include support for 802.11r Fast BSS Transition, which will mostly affect “Always-On” Chromebooks and allows for rapid, secure transitions from base station to base station. Finally, Material Design 2.0 has been incorporated into dialogs and secondary U.I., alongside other visual performance improvements. Support for the use of a PIN at sign-in is part of the new OS as well, in addition to the ability to add child accounts at the initial sign-in phase and high-resolution image support in the camera app.
Meanwhile, approximately 19 further devices appear to be slated to receive the update but the rollout hasn’t started yet for those, based on a screen capture from the Chrome OS proxy server. Acer’s Chromebook Tab 10 is among those, as is the ASUS Chromebook Flip C101PA. Both companies also have at least one Chromebox still waiting to receive the update. Other prominent devices on the list include at least three Dell-branded Chromebooks, the Chromebook Pixel and Pixelbook, and the HP Chromebox G2. That does mean that some of Google’s own devices are still awaiting the update. However, the list is primarily comprised of lesser-known brands. So users of most modern Chrome OS devices should expect the update to arrive within the next several days.