Google says that, finally, Fast Pair is coming to ChromeOS.
As part of a series of announcements at MWC today, Google has once again announced support for Fast Pair for headphones as coming to Chromebooks via a future ChromeOS update. The company says the feature is coming “soon,” but offered no further timeline.
- Wear OS 3 getting new sound and display modes as Chrome for Android adds 300% page zoom
- Android is adding support for eSIM transfer between devices
- Google Keep adding single note widget and Wear OS 3 complications
Fast Pair for ChromeOS has been a long road at this point. The feature was first officially announced at CES in January 2022, with the promise it would arrive in the months to come. Later on in the year, Google reminded us that the feature was coming, saying it would arrive in Summer 2022. But before either of those, the feature had been teased for Chromebooks as far back as 2018, with development work ongoing in 2021.
But here we are, over a year following Google’s official announcement, and the feature still has yet to actually come to life.
To Google’s credit this time around, we now have an idea of what Fast Pair on ChromeOS will actually look like, with a connection prompt appearing off to the right side of the UI and a quick connection thereafter. Google also confirmed that headphones paired to your account via Android will be able to automatically connect to a Chromebook via the standard.
Fast Pair connects new Bluetooth headphones to your Chromebook with just one tap. And if you’ve already set up your headphones with an Android phone, your Chromebook will automatically connect them too.
Google has also updated one of its support pages with more details about Fast Pair on Chromebooks. The page implies that Fast Pair may be disabled by default, or at least will require turning on the “scan for new devices” option in Settings > Bluetooth.
Of course, we still don’t know when exactly this feature will arrive, but we’re hoping “soon” really does mean it’s finally right around the corner. And, hopefully, that means Google will fulfill its currentlybroken promises for Fast Pair and Nearby Share across Windows and Google TV next.
More on Fast Pair:
- Fast Pair will make it easier to set up new Android phones, starting with Galaxy S23
- Android using Context Hub Runtime Environment to speed up Fast Pair
- Review: The OnePlus Buds Pro 2 sound good, but Spatial Audio is what delivers
Author: Ben Schoon
Source: 9TO5Google
