Here's what Chrome OS would look like with Assistant snapshot tool

[khtannnnnnnnnn]

Google recently spoke openly about wanting to further integrate its Assistant into Chrome OS in a more meaningful way, but we still don’t exactly know what that means. It’s only been just over a year since it made its debut on the operating system, and as of right now, it can be accessed via the ‘Everything button’, and through the context menu, for quick answers for information you highlight and right-click, but that’s it.

With Assistant getting pretty intelligent and useful through Google’s other products, I thought it would be fun to take a look at a tighter integration between the company’s helper and its laptops. Today, I went ahead and mocked up what it would look like to have Assistant’s Snapshot feature baked directly into Chrome OS. Mind you, this was done as a part of a larger project where I mocked up what Google’s Material You design would look like on Chromebooks, so it isn’t meant to be anything earth-shattering on its own.

There are no doubt much more meaningful ways for Google to integrate Assistant into Chrome OS, but since we’re still waiting for more information on what that could look like, this was a fun side project I thought up in the meantime and is just one example of what it could mean when it arrives. It’s true that Snapshot notifications could just be integrated into the standard notification tray above the quick settings, but having Snapshot separate would allow a quick way for users to glance at pertinent information on their laptop throughout the day without it being jumbled in with other notifications that may not be time-sensitive.

What do you think? Would you be interested in having direct access to calendar, weather, and other scheduling notifications as they come up without having to immediately pull up the Calendar web application? Do you feel that such a tool would allow you to get your bearings on your day even after you’ve dismissed such items from your notification section? I love the Snapshot tool in the Search app on Android, but I scarcely ever use it as I forget it exists! I do believe that such a tool would be more useful on a laptop, but that’s just my opinion.

I initially mocked up a sort of calendar widget, but I thought it less feasible and Googley than a Snapshot alternative, but if you’re interested, I’ll place that below as well. I imagine this alternative as showing upcoming calendar events and providing the user with a full glanceable month of dates similar to that of Windows. I know such a thing has been on many people’s wishlist while others loathe the idea of Chrome OS becoming more like Windows, but you can’t argue that it’s useful.