How to Enable Hidden Experimental Features in Chrome OS 91
If you’ve upgraded to Chrome OS 91, you can enable several hidden features, including a new trash folder and a better experience for progressive web apps. There is also a way to manually enable Live Captions in Chrome OS for users who don’t already have them.
These features are intentionally hidden – they are still in experimental phase and not ready for full release. In future updates to Chrome OS, they will probably be added as features by default, but if you want to try them out early, you can. You will have to make every effort to enable each feature, and they may not work correctly, but we will show you how to do it.
How to enable the Recycle Bin on Chrome OS
Let’s start with a hidden feature that most Chromebook users will need: a dedicated trash folder that acts just like a deleted file receiver on Windows and Mac. As many Chromebook users painfully realize, Chrome OS doesn’t allow you to recover deleted files, but you can change that by enabling the Recycle Bin.
When Chrome OS Recycle Bin is enabled, deleted files are sent to a folder where they remain until you restore them or permanently delete them. The trash folder is accessible from the file manager window.
The Chrome OS Trash folder is enabled via the experimental Chrome flags menu:
- In a new Chrome tab, navigate to chrome: // flags / # files-trash.
- Select the Enabled checkbox .
- Restart Chrome, then restart your Chromebook.
How to enable web app windows with progressive tabs in Chrome OS 91
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are web applications that look and feel like locally installed software, but take up less hard drive space. Most PWAs run in a single window, but will open links from the outside in a browser tab, making some PWAs less efficient than loading the page in a browser (looking at you YouTube).
Fortunately, Google will soon be implementing tabbed PWA navigation in Chrome OS so that you can open multiple links or documents in the same PWA window and switch between them easily, but you can get this feature sooner if you enable this experimental feature in the Chrome flags menu. …
- Open a new Chrome tab, then click on the link: chrome: // flags / # enable -desktop-pwas-tab-strip.
- Select Enabled from the drop-down menu.
- Then follow the link : chrome: // flags / # enable-desktop-pwas-tab-strip-link-capturing.
- Also set this flag to Enabled .
- When prompted to save your changes, restart Chrome.
- Restart your Chromebook.
The next time you install the PWA, a dialog will ask if you want to launch the Tabbed PWA.
To open a PWA that you have already installed with a tabbed window, right-click the application icon on your desktop and select New Window> New Tabbed Window.
How to enable live subtitles in Chrome OS 91
Finally, there is an option for some users to enable live subtitles. For those who don’t know, Live Caption on Chromebooks is the same AI-powered live transcription feature that turns any audio into on-screen captions on Android devices. The function works even when the volume is turned off or when you are offline. With the release of Chrome OS, 91 Live Captions were expected to be available to everyone, but some devices are not yet available.
But don’t worry – you may be able to turn it on yourself.
- In a Chrome browser window, open: chrome: // flags / # enable-accessibility-live-caption.
- Select the Enabled checkbox .
- Restart Chrome for the changes to take effect.
- Restart your Chromebook.
- Check out our Guide to Interactive Captioning for how to enable (and disable) this feature on your Chromebook after a restart.
There is a chance that the live subtitles will not work even after the flag is turned on, as some users see the error that their device cannot download the required speech files. There is a workaround for this, but it must be temporary as it affects the accuracy of the transcription.
- In Chrome, go to chrome: // flags / # enable-accessibility-live-caption-soda again.
- In the box, select Disabled .
- Restart Chrome, then restart your Chromebook.
After a restart, Live Captions should work now, but remember to re-enable the # enable-accessibility-live-caption-soda flag in the future to ensure you have the latest speech recognition files loaded.
[ Android Police ]