Chrome OS is moving into a touch-based environment. Laptops like the Chromebook Pixel and Acer C720P are now being released with touchscreens, and Google is improving the user interface to accommodate touch controls. All we need is a good on-screen keyboard, and Google has improved it a bit today.
The experimental Chrome OS keyboard has been out since May, 2013 and is improving little by little. The latest Chrome OS Dev brings a feature that allows users to lock the keyboard in place, even when you are not focused on a text field.
The keyboard should usually hide after you are no longer in a text field, but if you want it to stay locked on the screen you can now easily do it. To enable the keyboard just go to chrome://flags/#enable-virtual-keyboard and enable the experimental flag.
How to lock the Chrome OS virtual keyboard
To access the settings, just long-tap on the keyboard key (in the virtual keyboard) and a few options will appear. One of them is to lock it, as you can see in the image above.
I don’t think Chrome OS is ready for full-on touch capabilities, but I am excited to see how the future looks. The idea of having tablets and other laptop hybrids with Chrome OS is really quite exciting. How long will it be before such devices are ready to hit the market, though?
