After all, Android apps run better on Chromebooks
Google has been pushing hard to improve the Android experience on Chromebooks, and it really seems to be paying off. To that end, the company announced that 50% more people are using Android apps on Chrome OS than just a year ago.
The metric takes into account the number of Chromebook users interacting with Android apps, and the number is clearly growing. Google shared this number as part of a year-end developer recap, where it also reminds us that Chrome OS as a whole has grown 92% over the past year, making it the fastest growing platform.
This growth is no accident, as we’ve seen very deliberate efforts to not only improve Android on Chrome OS, but to encourage interest in the platform as a whole. We’ve seen improvements introduced like a feature that lets you hotspot your phone through your Chromebook, notification mirroring, and photo sharing. The latter keeps your shared photos in a lower, more accessible section of the Phone Hub. The company has also improved Google Photos integration with File Manager for users who often import photos.
Of course, we’re mostly focusing on Android-specific Chrome OS tweaks, and there were plenty of those throughout the year, like locking window size to help prevent OS instability. ‘application. But beyond that, we’ve also seen other cases of crossover, like in Chrome OS 96, when Google brought to the platform the same sort of MAC address randomization that we enjoy on Android. This version also included Nearby Sharing to easily transfer items with your phone or other nearby devices, and a dedicated section for turning notifications on or off and toggling Do Not Disturb mode. We could go on, but you get the idea.
The year-over-year growth is clearly the result of a lot of hard work and invested resources, and Google doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.
