From www.androidpolice.com

Google is preparing its laptop OS for dynamic theming

Android 13 and Material You could be about to hit your Chromebook

Google may push monthly ChromeOS updates to all of our favorite Chromebooks, but that isn’t the case for all components within the operating system. New Android releases are much slower to come to ChromeOS, and Google usually only provides full system updates every two years. With ChromeOS currently offering 2021’s Android 11, it’s high time for an update. Evidence has surfaced that an Android 13 release could be imminent.

Google has been testing all kinds of new Android releases for ChromeOS for a while now, including both Android 12 and even Android 14, which was just launched as a developer preview for Pixel phones, but it’s likely that the company will release Android 13 as the next public version. As spotted by 9to5Google, a new flag has been added that can only affect builds that run Android 13 or higher, called “Switch to KeyMint on ARC-T.” ARC-T here stands for Android Runtime for Chrome Tiramisu, with Tiramisu being the internal code name Google uses for Android 13. The flag isn’t available on ChromeOS just yet, but Google has indicated that it will launch soon. Moreover, another Chromium Gerrit entry talks about an unspecified ARC-T launch date, further suggesting that the release shouldn’t be too far out.

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Android 13 and Material You could be about to hit your Chromebook

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The addition of Android 13 would tie right into Google’s progress with Material You theming on ChromeOS. Android Police alumnus Kent Duke offered a first glimpse of the wallpaper-based dynamic theming engine on Chrome OS, dunking elements like the file manager, title bars, the taskbar, and the notification center in the dominant color derived from your wallpaper by enabling hidden flags within the system. A key missing part here were Android apps, though, which don’t support dynamic theming on Android 11, the version of the mobile OS that powers mobile apps on ChromeOS.

With Android 13 being the second release to support dynamic theming, an inconsistent theme across ChromeOS could be avoided. We suspect that as Google is ramping up to release Material You on ChromeOS, it will simultaneously also push Android 13 to Chromebooks in order to give users the full dynamically themed experience. As all the puzzle pieces fall together, we will likely still have to wait for a bit. Who knows, maybe the company has the switch to the new UI planned as a big release for its developer conference Google I/O in May.

The post Android 13 and Material You could be about to hit your Chromebook first appeared on www.androidpolice.com

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Android 13 and Material You could be about to hit your ChromebookAndroid 13 and Material You could be about to hit your Chromebook

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