I’ve been developing the new Chromebook Productivity Launcher for a while now. It’s a brand new left-aligned app launcher on the shelf for Chrome OS users and provides faster access to your content instead of taking up half or the whole display when opened like the current design.
Since its inception, it’s been proven to reduce speed pitfalls by reducing unnecessary animations, pagination, and more. It also gives you access to recently opened files and can even alphabetize your apps for the first time since the release of Chrome OS, which has been one of the most requested features for years.
Google is all about accessibility, and today’s news digs deeper into their commitment. Right-clicking anywhere in your app’s grid on the Productivity Launcher on Chrome OS Canary will now allow you to select “Color” and automatically sort your apps based on their visual color grading. As you can see in the video below, just like with Literacy and Reverse Literacy, the folders stay on top and all icons in those folders are sorted the same while contained.
In this case, all apps in folders are sorted by color, then all your free apps are also sorted by color under said folders. It’s honestly pretty cool, and I didn’t really expect it to be a feature. If you’re not paying too much attention when I scroll, you might find it hard to tell that everything is actually sorted by color, but it is. Google should use AI and machine learning to identify the colors of each icon and sort them accordingly. This only solidifies my awareness that Google is getting into this new launcher, and I can’t wait to see what else they add and how quickly. The Productivity Launcher has recently become available to most users, and it’s already becoming incredibly useful compared to the lackluster “peeking” launcher we’ve been stuck with for years.
Let me know below if you will use this method of organization for your content, or if you prefer the recently added literacy. Myself, I always prefer to sort my launcher in my own way based on application usefulness or type of task, so I wouldn’t risk playing around with that too much, but I can already tell you that it’s pretty amazing to locate things at a glance. keep an eye out for research since I know so many icons that I use every day.
