Google is rolling out a new ChromeOS update that makes it easier to keep apps organized on your screen, copy text from images, and adjust camera and microphone settings on Chromebook devices.
The ChromeOS camera app now supports optical character recognition (OCR) to extract text from captured images of letters or other documents. It lets users copy or search for text in images, turn images into searchable PDFs more easily, and have image-based text read by ChromeOS’s built-in screen reader. Google says its OCR supports landscape and portrait detection in 77 languages and is disabled by default in photo mode.
Additionally, the Magnifier tool will now work with ChromeVox, allowing the screen magnifier to automatically follow words when text is read aloud, helping visually impaired users remember where they are. This feature is also disabled by default and will require both Magnifier and ChromeVox to be enabled in the device settings.
Chromebooks’ cameras and microphones are also getting some quality of life improvements — using them required turning on privacy controls and app permissions in two separate places — but Google has now simplified this by adding software permissions to the apps section of the ChromeOS settings menu. There’s also a new Automatic Gain Control (AGC) feature that lets apps like video calling software automatically optimize microphone volume. This should improve audio quality on calls, and will notify users in the quick settings panel when the feature overrides manual audio controls.
