Google may soon bring a new feature that would allow Google Pixel owner’s to mirror their phone’s screen on Chrome OS. Apparently, Google has been testing a new feature for the Chrome OS that would allow screen mirroring.
This screen mirroring feature was first spotted a few months back in September 2020 as a new flag in Chromium Gerrit. Phone Hub will have some similar functionalities to Microsoft’s Your Phone.
With the help of Phone Hub, users could access their phone’s notifications and control some of the features of their phones right from their Chromebooks.
While some users could make use of the Phone Hub feature as it went live via Chrome OS 90 on the Canary Channel. Further, users will be able to enable their phone’s hotspot.
Moreover, other features that Phone Hub include is enabling DND mode, locate their phones, sync Chrome tabs and notifications across connected devices, reply to messages right from their Chromebook.
Now, a new report by 9To5Google suggests that soon Chrome OS will provide the option to mirror their phone’s screen. Notably, there is a new flag “#eche-swa” which Google is currently working upon.
Eche is an app that would allow for video feed being broadcast over WebRTC
According to the source, this Chrome OS screen mirroring flag enables the SWA version of the Eche. FYI, Eche presumably is a Spanish word that means “throw” or “cast.”
This hints that the new flag will enable the users to cast or mirror their phone’s screen onto the Chrome OS devices. Folks at 9To5Google were able to gain a few insights into a snippet that explains this feature.
The “eche-swa” flag’s snippets states, “Implements the core logic of the EcheApp which is a SWA to transmitting video and bidirectional data over WebRTC.”
In simpler terms, Eche is an app that is related to the video feeds. It allows the video feed to broadcast over WebRTC. It is similar to what several other apps use in order to share data between two devices.
A similar function is available with Microsoft’s Your Phone app. Once this feature is live, you could cast your Google Pixel’s screen over to Chrome OS by tapping a button or notification.
Since the javascript is available in a Google source code, meaning that this feature will probably be limited to Google Pixel phones. At least to a specific Pixel phone at launch.
Besides, the feature has a long way to make its way as a feature to be included in Chrome OS. And being in early stages of development, there is no information regarding the launch date.