Google may push monthly ChromeOS updates to all ofour favorite Chromebooks, but that isn’t the case for all components within the operating system. New Android releases are much slower to come to ChromeOS, and Google usually only provides full system updates every two years. With ChromeOS currently offering 2021’s Android 11, it’s high time for an update. Evidence has surfaced that anAndroid 13release could be imminent.
Google has been testing all kinds of new Android releases for ChromeOS for a while now, including both Android 12 and evenAndroid 14, which was just launched as a developer preview for Pixel phones, but it’s likely that the company will release Android 13 as the next public version. As spotted by9to5Google, anew flag has been addedthat can only affect builds that run Android 13 or higher, called “Switch to KeyMint on ARC-T.” ARC-T here stands for Android Runtime for Chrome Tiramisu, with Tiramisu being the internal code name Google uses for Android 13. The flag isn’t available on ChromeOS just yet, but Google has indicated that it will launch soon. Moreover, another Chromium Gerrit entrytalks about an unspecified ARC-T launch date, further suggesting that the release shouldn’t be too far out.
The addition of Android 13 would tie right into Google’s progress withMaterial Youtheming on ChromeOS. Android Police alumnus Kent Dukeoffered a first glimpse of the wallpaper-based dynamic theming engineon Chrome OS, dunking elements like the file manager, title bars, the taskbar, and the notification center in the dominant color derived from your wallpaper by enabling hidden flags within the system. A key missing part here were Android apps, though, which don’t support dynamic theming on Android 11, the version of the mobile OS that powers mobile apps on ChromeOS.
With Android 13 being the second release to support dynamic theming, an inconsistent theme across ChromeOS could be avoided. We suspect that as Google is ramping up to release Material You on ChromeOS, it will simultaneously also push Android 13 to Chromebooks in order to give users the full dynamically themed experience. As all the puzzle pieces fall together, we will likely still have to wait for a bit. Who knows, maybe the company has the switch to the new UI planned as a big release for its developer conference Google I/O in May.
