Since January, we've been tracking a new Chrome OS feature, Scalable Status Area, in the Chromium Gerrit. Over the last few weeks, more information about it has emerged from the repository. A merged commit offers an overview of the feature: show the date in the system tray when the screen is sufficiently large. Alerts will also be pinned next to it.
const char kScalableStatusAreaName[] = "Enable Scalable Status Area";
const char kScalableStatusAreaDescription[] =
"Showing important notification icons and date in status area when the "
"screen is sufficiently large.";
To elaborate, "important notifications" are persistent app messages and system alerts that aren't dismissable by the user, ranging from software updates to Google Assistant timers. If we look inside unified_system_tray_model.cc in this commit, we can get a better picture of how the "scaling" logic works: displays larger than 800 pixels wide will show a persistent notification's icon in the tray. Chrome OS will also add the date if the user's display is over 1280 pixels wide.
namespace {
// The minimum width for system tray with size of kMedium.
constexpr int kMinWidthMediumSystemTray = 800;// The maximum width for system tray with size of kMedium.
constexpr int kMaxWidthMediumSystemTray = 1280;}
With some effort, we enabled the Scalable Status Area in the latest Chrome OS 90.0.4414.0 Canary update. Here's a closer look.
