What you need to know
- Google announced Chrome OS 86 recently, an update meant to make the company's desktop operating system more accessible.
- Instead, users report it has left some devices bricked and unresponsive leading to it being pulled from servers.
- Google restarted the rollout this morning after presumably fixing the underlying issue.
Google announced Chrome OS 86 earlier this month, but the company has had to pull off its servers due to a variety of bugs (via Android Police.) Now, the rollout has resumed after the it has tackled the root cause presumably.
It's not clear precisely what was wrong with the update. Some Pixelbook owners on r/ChromeOS reported their devices being bricked, while other Chromebook owners reported general instability. Some like myself suffered from nothing at all, but we can imagine that an issue like devices being bricked would lead to the update being pulled — even if only out of an abundance of caution.
That being said, Google has now restored the update, so you're free to download Chrome OS 86 once more.
With Chrome OS 86, Google is adding customizable cursor colors, updates to Select-to-speak, ChrmeVox, and improvements to generated PDFs so that they work better with screen readers. It's also stabilizing the icon shapes on the platform with a new tool to force all icon shapes into the round style we have on Android. Finally, it's added a new photo editor to the gallery app. The update is available now, and hopefully with fewer bugs.
Lenovo Duet
It's a Chromebook that's made plenty of waves as the perfect Chromebook for work, play, or just chilling on the couch with a comic to read. The new Lenovo USI Pen will make it a fun artist companion as well, or even a notepad for your idle thoughts.
