ChromeOS on Pixel? Google’s Secret Project Lets You Ditch the Laptop

We all dream of using our smartphones to power an entire computing experience that you can only get from a laptop. And according to a recent report, that dream just might have come true. Google has recently shown that it’s possible to have ChromeOS running on a Pixel phone with all the bells and whistles, along with an external monitor setup.

Android Authority first caught wind of this report. Google recently held a “private” event where the company showed off a Pixel 8 running ChromeOS on an extended monitor.

Google has not yet made it clear as to why they did this, as the event never even made note of any of this.

But it seems like they might just be giving “smartphone makers the tools” to run Android and ChromeOS on the same device.

Among those tools is the Android Virtualization Framework, Android Authority says, which was introduced in Android 13. While it’s not the goal, AVF technically allows Android devices to run a virtual machine of another operating system. And, apparently, this special build of Chromium OS has “official support” for running through the AVF.

The project is apparently called “ferrochrome.”

In a second post by Android Authority, this build is shown in action, running on a Pixel 7 Pro’s screen rather than an external monitor.

But, sadly, it doesn’t sound like this is something Google intends to launch anytime soon. That said, though, Google has finally started to open up support for Pixel phones (starting with the Pixel 8) to connect to displays over USB-C, so maybe the two are related.