Chrome OS version 122 now available

Here's what you need to know

The latest Chrome release notes include 54 updates. These are the 4 that are worth your time to dig into.

• Chrome OS now has built-in AI features that schools will likely want to block. This is a huge change, so we have a whole separate guide about this. The long and short is that you should disable TabOrganizerSettings, CreateThemesSettings, and HelpMeWriteSettings. Do not rely on the Google defaults, which can change over time and be overridden by your admins. (You also might want to enable AI for yourself and staff for testing purposes.) Seriously, check out the Chrome OS AI guide so you know how these features affect your users, guest sessions, Locked Mode, and kiosk mode for assessments. This one is worth your time.
• Sites will start breaking if they depend on third party cookies. You must configure settings if you want to control the transition for your users. See the policies BlockThirdPartyCookies and CookiesAllowedForUrls.
• Battery saver will slow down your Chromebooks when they're under 20% charge in order to eek out a bit of extra runtime. You may want to disable this if you already have good charging infrastructure and low-performance devices using BatterySaverModeAvailability. Note that although this policy is not brand new in Chrome 122, it is being updated to remove one of the options. It is now essentially Enable/Disable or leave up to the end user.
• Force-install extensions in Incognito is now supported within Admin Console. You should have Incognito disabled, but if you need to enable it for some reason, ensure your web filtering extension is set to work in Incognito.

Optional but interesting updates

• Screencast editing features allow you to trim screencasts by adding and removing text

Many more smaller changes

As always, Google is releasing dozens of smaller features in the latest version of Chrome OS. You can see the full list here.

New settings & recommended configuration