We’re continuing to find great, new features tucked away in the latest build of ChromeOS in the Beta Channel, and one of my favorite new ones to tinker with at this point is ChromeOS’ new Android App Streaming. We’ve talked about this upcoming feature for what feels like forever, and it looks like it is now knocking on the door at this point.
ChromeOS 114 isn’t due in the Stable Channel until the first week of June, so the three weeks we still have to wait feel like ample opportunity for Google to deliver things like App Streaming, Material You overhauls, new split-screen controls and Android 11 for more devices when this next update does show up. That’s a lot for one update, for sure, but these changes and features all feel ready to roll out at this point, and App Streaming is among the most interesting of the bunch.
What is Android App Streaming on Chromebooks?
If you’ve not been following along up to this point, let me get you caught up. Android App Streaming for Chromebooks is basically a baked-in phone mirroring service that will let Android users see their phone in a tiny pop-up window to do just about any task they want from their phone directly on the Chromebook’s screen.
Known as ‘Eche’ while in development, App Streaming has been on the way to an actual release for a little over a month at this point. We started tracking early development all the way back in February of 2021, so it’s been well over two years we’ve been aware that this feature was on the way to ChromeOS. That’s a long, long time to track a feature for any device.
Android App Streaming is here and pretty awesome
But this one is complex, nuanced, and likely not the easiest thing to pull off. And it seems Google has done the work to get most of the kinks worked out with it before actually launching. The overall UI looks just as it did in our earlier looks from April, and the limitations haven’t been removed just yet. For instance, copy/paste between ChromeOS and your phone isn’t there, but that’s a limitation that will likely go away in the future.
But the core parts of pulling up your phone’s apps and interacting with them on your Chromebook all work a bit better than I even expected them to. With the ability to access most of my apps on my phone right from my Chromebook’s system tray, I’m wondering how I’ll move forward with messaging apps as this feature continues to flesh itself out.
For simple apps like Instagram or Facebook Messenger, I’m happy to just pull those up on my App Streaming window when needed versus actually installing an Android app or web app. Other quick tasks like setting an alarm or playing the daily Wordle or NY Times crossword puzzle are great with App Streaming, and at the end of the day, these are simply tasks I have to simply retrain my brain to use in the App Streaming window versus finding a way to do on my Chromebook.
Additionally, App Streaming makes the case for keeping my phone’s notifications on via my Chromebook, too, since I can actually respond quickly to messages and such via my notifications if I choose. It’s a very different, very interesting way to merge the phone/Chromebook experience, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all plays out over the coming months.
For now, you can only use it with a handful of phones and in the Beta Channel of ChromeOS 114. There are no additional flags needed and App Streaming will simply show up in your phone hub settings once the criteria are met. So if you have a Pixel 4a or better, Android 13, and a Chromebook in the Beta Channel, it might be a fun experiment to give this all a try. I’d imagine we’ll see it officially on ChromeOS in June with the next update, so you can wait until then as well. Either way, it’s a fun feature that I think will work to the benefit of different users in different ways over time.
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