Your Chromebook may soon gain one of the best Android features
Over the past six months, Google has been blowing us away with the various Chrome OS updates that have been bringing new features to Chromebooks. But Google’s not done just yet, as a new Chrome Flag has been discovered suggesting that Fast Pair for Bluetooth devices is in the works.
Discovered by Chrome Story, the flag appeared just this morning in the Chromium Gerrit with the following description:
Enable Fast Pair: Enables Google Fast Pair service which uses BLE to discover supported nearby Bluetooth devices and surfaces a notification for quick pairing. Use along with #bluetooth-advertisement-monitoring to allow background scanning.
Since this is only just now appearing the Chromium codebase, it is not yet available in the Canary channel just yet. Mentions of this feature coming to Chrome OS started back in May, and this latest Gerrit just brings us one-step closer.
Google introduced Fast Pair for Bluetooth devices all the way back in 2017. This is similar to how you connect AirPods to an iPhone or other Apple device, as you simply unlock your phone, turn your new headphones on, and then follow the on-screen prompts to pair the devices. When available, this is a MUCH easier process for pairing Bluetooth headphones compared to going through the Bluetooth settings menu.
And now that the feature is in the works for Chrome OS, it’s going to be easier than ever to just pair your favorite Bluetooth headphones with your Chromebook. Once it’s rolled out to the stable channel, maybe this could open the door for some of this Fast Pair tech to make its way to things like external keyboards and mice.
But for now, we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed and wait until Fast Pair actually makes its way to Chrome OS.