Aluminium OS: Everything We Know About the Chromebook Successor

It’s ne'er fun to beryllium successful past place. Google has been coasting on with its Android tablets and Chromebooks for years, playing 2nd fiddle to the bigger players successful the game.

But the institution has a caller paper up its sleeve: the upcoming merger of its 2 platforms into thing wholly new. Word connected the thoroughfare is that it’s called Aluminium OS, and it’s coming sooner than you mightiness think.

What Is Aluminium OS?

Ever since the failed motorboat of the Pixel Slate backmost successful 2018, which was Google's archetypal effort astatine integrating ChromeOS and Android, onlookers person been wondering what the aboriginal of these platforms would be. Reports astir a caller desktop operating strategy person been mucking astir for years, thing that blends ChromeOS with Android.

Google talked astir interoperability improvements betwixt ChromeOS and Android astatine Google I/O 2025. In the past decade, Google has made tiny moves toward integrating these 2 operating systems, but it has been incremental, starting with bringing Android apps to Chromebooks, and past with smaller features that marque them consciousness similar a azygous ecosystem of products. It's not dissimilar to Apple’s approach. So far, some companies person resisted wholly unifying mobile and desktop computing, and Apple has denied plans to merge macOS and iPadOS.

More recently, astatine Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit successful September, Google confirmed that ChromeOS and Android volition merge; Google’s hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, took to the signifier to supply immoderate details. He referred to the operating strategy arsenic “bringing Android to the PC market” and confirmed a concern with Qualcomm connected this caller platform. It’s a fitting partner, considering the chipmaker's acquisition successful powering phones, tablets, and laptops. Later during the conference, Google's Sameer Samat, president of the Android ecosystem, reportedly said that Google has “always had precise antithetic systems betwixt what we’re gathering connected PCs and what we’re gathering connected smartphones. We’ve embarked connected a task to harvester that.”

The Google execs confirmed this task would motorboat sometime successful 2026. Google I/O 2026 seems an evident choice, but we’ll person to hold and see.