This morning on my old daily driver Chromebook, while moving some apps in my launcher, I moved one too far. Whoops! Turns out I was able to drag an app to my tray, much like pinning it. At one point, Chrome OS added the ability to drag and drop apps from your launcher directly into the system tray. It probably happened a long time ago and I must have missed it. Here’s how it works in case you do too and like this more efficient method of managing apps on a Chromebook.
Note that the new productivity launch flag is enabled, but there’s no need to drag and drop apps to the system tray. I first saw this in Chrome OS 96 and like it much better than the wide view launcher currently on most Chromebooks. But again, you don’t need this.
Next, open your app launcher to select an app by clicking on it. Don’t let go of the mouse button. You can now drag it out of the launcher.
Above is what it looks like in “mid drag”, showing the Play Store icon effectively between the launcher on the left and the system tray at the bottom of my Chromebook.
Below is an image of me deciding where to place the Play Store icon on my system tray. Note that I always hold down the mouse button the whole time; once i let go, the app will be aborted at this point.
Essentially, this provides a graphical method for pinning an app to the system tray, a feature Chromebooks already have.
However, “pinning” is currently done via a menu option. This graphical approach is more akin to how managing application shortcuts works on Macs and Windows PCs. And it’s much more natural.
In case you were wondering what happens when you drag an app out of the system tray, I tested that too.
The app appears translucent once you drag it from the tray. Then you just release the mouse button and it disappears.
At no time does it disappear from the Launcher. So you don’t have to worry about deleting or uninstalling it with this method.
I didn’t have to enable experimental flags for this specific characteristic. However, to get the Launcher view I’m using, I had to enable some flags. Details of them are in my roundup of features that came to Chrome OS 96 if you want to test it out on your Chromebook. (I love it!)
And even though I’m using Chrome OS 100 on my daily driver, I’ve tested this with the current stable version of Chrome OS 98, so pretty much anyone can take advantage of it for faster Chromebook app management. Google’s support page on pinning apps to the system tray still shows the old “pinning” method. Maybe this was added more recently than I thought!
