Chrome OS has come a long way since its humble beginnings. Gone are the days of it being widely labeled as a “glorified web browser.” In addition to Progressive Web Apps, modern Chromebooks now support Android apps and Linux apps natively. With each app ecosystem, of course, comes notifications and those can pile up quickly in the recently redesigned Chrome OS menu.
Only last Fall did it become possible to clear all notifications with one tap, and it takes some doing to find the button. In the stable, beta and dev channels you have to swipe up on the bottom-most notification to even see the “Clear All” button. It does not appear without that extra action. Thankfully, this will no longer be the case in Chrome OS 76, currently available in the Canary channel, as the button has been moved to the top.
If you’re okay with living on the cutting edge and its accompanying risks, and you don’t want to wait for the change to find its way to the stable channel, you can switch to the Canary channel to try it out right now. A word of caution, though: it’s not for the faint of heart as you’ll be using the least stable of the four main Chrome OS builds.
While this might seem like an insignificant change on the surface, for those of you who are “Instagram influencers” (or other popular social media users), busy professionals, and power users will no doubt appreciate the simplified method to clear away those scores of notifications you’d rather get to later. Hopefully, the change makes its way through the dev, beta, and stable channels sooner than later.