Take one look at your Chromebook’s keyboard compared to the one found on a Mac or Windows-based laptop, and you’ll instantly notice some differences. For one, the Caps Lock key is replaced with a dedicated Search button, and there are other keys that are missing from many Chromebooks.
Instead, Google wants you to rely on keyboard shortcuts to perform even the most basic of tasks, like using the Delete Key. But it seems that while Google has removed some functionality recently, the company is working on a new keyboard customization app for Chrome OS.
Discovered by Chrome Story, there’s an all-new Shortcut System Web App that has been revealed in a Chromium Gerrit commit. The app is not enabled by default, meaning that you’ll have to dive into chrome://flags in order to make this web app appear. However, once that’s completed, you’ll be able to customize various shortcuts in Chrome OS.
The web app has been shown off, sharing the different keys and functions that you will be able to customize. the list seems pretty bare, but it’s entirely possible that this is just a jumping off point before Google adds more options to the list. We aren’t sure when this will be arriving for everyone, nor do we know if it will even make its way to Chrome OS on the whole. But there have been plenty of requests to bring this to Chrome OS, so it’s great to see Google making some leeway.