Google’s ChromeOS is a lightweight operating system that fuses your Android apps with a computer-like user experience. The result is a balanced middle ground between multitasking on one of thebest Android tabletsand Windows computers let down by the limited interoperability between Android and Microsoft’s OS. Like Windows, ChromeOS has a Shelf for all your essential apps and web pages. It’s also home to theglanceable widgetswe first caught wind of in August last year. Calendar’s glanceable now has a dedicated section forGoogle Tasksappended to it in the latest beta.
Google seems to have an app for every requirement imaginable, and consequently, several apps have overlapping functions. The company periodically combines the redundant ones, like it did withGoogle Meet and Duo. It alsocombined Assistant and Calendar reminders with Tasksearlier this year in June. Everyone’s recurring and upcoming reminders were automatically converted to tasks in this change. As a result, you may still see your upcoming events in the calendar from the ChromeOS shelf, but Google is now making it better, by appending the Tasks section directly above that.
Google has added a new glanceable Tasks section just above the calendar
The change was first spotted in development on ChromeOS 117 Canary by@cr_c2cv on X(Formerly Twitter). This version of the OS is now in the beta testing phase, andAbout Chromebooksreports the Tasks section is available. Since Google often uses Canary builds for experimentation and temporary features, seeing this one make it to the beta channel suggests it could be close to a wider release with an upcoming stable channel update.
The glanceable widget for Tasks is available when you toggle the following flag in ChromeOS 117 Beta.
chrome://flags/#glanceables_v2
You can switch lists within the Tasks glanceable widget
Enabling it shows the tasks on your selected list, which you can pick from the drop-down menu in the widget’s upper left corner. However, there are a few functional elements missing, such as an option allowing you to add new tasks to a list. That isn’t a surprise, though, considering the Calendar widget underneath also doesn’t allow adding events through the glanceable. For new lists, though, Google provides anAdd new taskbutton which redirects to the Google Calendar web app where you can add a reminder using the Tasks side panel. The Calendar and Tasks widgets aren’t mutually exclusive either, and there’s no button or option immediately available to have Tasks show without pulling up the calendar as well, and vice versa.
There’s an option to add new tasks to empty lists
It would be nice to see Google disconnect the glanceable widget for Tasks from Calendar and bring support for adding events to at least one of them right in the widget. Although the probability of functional changes is slim once Google moves to beta testing features, it may just happen before the feature’s release, which is expected with ChromeOS 118.
