Now You Can Control Your Chromebook With Just Your Face
Controlling your computer with a mouse may seem like second nature to you, but for people with motor control issues or other disabilities that prevent them from keeping a steady hand on a peripheral, it can be a frustrating experience. That’s why Google is giving Chromebook users the ability to control cursors with their face .
First announced in December, Face Control allows Chromebooks to use your webcam and facial gestures as input. Look down to move the cursor down to the menu, or look up and left to hover over the Compose button in Gmail. Move your mouth left or right to left or right click and open your mouth to start using voice to text.
Assuming there are no glitches, the tool should provide full hands-free operation, which is intended to ensure accessibility. This is another AI-powered feature that “uses a range of machine learning models” to create a 3D mesh of your face with 478 specific facial points for precise control, Google says.
There’s a slight catch: Google recommends 8GB of RAM for best performance, but now that the feature is out of beta, you can try it out for yourself and test it out. Google says it’s now available to all users, along with features to access Reading View in the Chrome browser with a more natural voice, as well as using a screen reader on “previously unavailable PDFs.” On the other hand, Face Control is actually quite convenient. is similar to Project Gameface , a similar tool developed by Google for Windows and Android that allows gamers to control games such as World of Warcraft by matching facial gestures to in-game actions.
Unfortunately, while Project Gameface is open source, allowing developers to customize the tool and add support as they see fit, Face Control is currently limited to ChromeOS. To turn it on once you have it, find it in the Accessibility menu under Settings > Accessibility .