can you change the os on a google chrome book

You just need to visit this site to create a bootable Chrome OS Flex instance on a USB drive and go from there. While Google is focusing Flex on businesses and education, anyone can try it. Flex also has access to the Google Assistant, a feature built into most popular Chromebooks these days and something CloudReady didn’t offer before. It uses the same code base as Chrome OS, and Flex devices will get software updates simultaneously (before, Neverware had to wait for Google to push out a Chrome OS update and then make it work with CloudReady). Not now Turn on Turned on Turn onĬhrome OS Flex is also more capable than the CloudReady product it will eventually replace.

You can disable notifications at any time in your settings menu. Once Flex is installed, those devices can be managed in the same way any other Chrome OS hardware is, so IT departments can deploy specific software installs or permissions. Flex can be deployed over a network to multiple devices, and IT departments can manage everything through Google’s Admin console. As such, one of the big benefits of Chrome OS Flex is that IT departments can manage the devices just like any other Chrome OS hardware. If you decide that you’re ready to wipe the computer, you can then replace the existing OS with Chrome OS and use the computer as a full-fledged Chromebook.Īnyone can try Chrome OS Flex today, but Google is positioning the product more towards businesses and education institutions - something that the company already focuses on with Chrome OS more broadly.

The idea behind Chrome OS Flex is the same: you can visit a website, quickly make a Chrome OS image on a USB drive, and then run that on a PC or Mac. It’s called Chrome OS Flex, and it’s a rebuilt version of CloudReady that was built internally with access to all of Google’s code and resources. CloudReady continued to be available after Google bought Neverware, but today we’re getting our first look at an updated version of the product that’s been in the works for the last year or so.

The idea was that if you had aging hardware that wasn’t running Windows or macOS as well as it used to, you could get more life out of it by using it as a Chromebook. In late 2020, Google bought the company Neverware, which had made a name for itself thanks to a product called CloudReady that let individual users or large organizations turn old Windows PCs and Macs into Chrome OS devices.

Can you change the os on a google chrome book