Google is working on adaptive sync support on Chrome OS

Chrome OS has received an update in its developer channel that adds support for variable refresh rates. There don’t seem to be any Chrome OS devices that have a VRR display yet.

The setting was discovers by Kevin Tofel of aboutchromebooks.com. The flag he discovered is chrome://flags#enable-variable-refresh-rate. This ‘enables a variable refresh rate (adaptive sync) for displays that are able to do so’, according to the further description of the flag. Although there are no built-in Chromebook displays that support this, Tofel speculates that an externally connected VRR display may be able to take advantage of the feature thanks to this flag.

Not only are there no Chromebooks with a VRR display in the Pricewatch yet, there are also no Chromebooks with refresh rates above 60Hz. Chromebooks that are strongly gaming-oriented have yet to make their appearance on the market.

The development coincides with the arrival of an alpha version of Steam for Chrome OS. that must ‘shortly’ are available to a select group of Chrome OS testers. The minimum requirements for Steam on Chrome OS are Reportedly hefty: with less than an 11th generation Intel Core i5 and 7GB [sic] ram does not require a user to start it. It is still unknown which games can run on Steam via that platform; after all, the lion’s share is developed for Windows. Presumably, Valve will also come up with a Proton-esque solution on this front, just like with the Steam Deck.

9to5Google also reported last month that Nvidia is working on support for discrete video cards in Chrome OS. These could then be ‘exclusively used by the Steam virtual machine’. There don’t seem to be any Chromebooks with discrete GPUs at the moment either.