Google testing feature to merge notifications and toggles in Chrome OS

Google is testing a feature to merge the notifications and toggles into a single screen. Anyone running the Canary build of Chrome OS can try the feature. Google doesn’t think it’s ready for the general public yet.

The option is a flag in Chrome OS, Reddit user InauspiciousPagan discovered. Several users have now been able to enable the option. You can try this by looking up the flag on a Chrome OS machine with the address chrome://flags/#enable-system-tray-unified. If you enable that flag, you will see the new menu.

The combined menu shows the toggles at the bottom and the notifications above, in windows with rounded corners. Those rounded corners are part of what appears to be a new ‘design language’ from Google. The Developer Preview of Android P shows elements with the same kind of design.

The Canary build is the experimental version of Chrome OS. It will probably be released in the Dev build after that, after which it will be in the Beta build before it will be in the stable version of Chrome OS. There is a chance that Google will remove the feature or change its appearance in the meantime.

It is unknown if and when Google will announce the feature. In a few weeks, Google I/O, the internet giant’s developer conference, will take place. That is often a place where the American company presents many new functions.