Summary
- ChromeOS could soon receive more system sounds, according to a Google blog post.
- Google recently improved sound design in ChromeOS, adding charging and battery-related sounds to give auditory feedback. The sound design also serves as an accessibility feature for those with visual impairments.
- The company explains it had to build a new framework to add system sounds to ChromeOS, starting from scratch. This opens the possibility for more system sounds in the future.
Chromebooks have slowly but surely become a vital alternative to MacBooks and Windows laptops for many people. After building a solid foundation over the years, Google has recently started focusing more on quality-of-life improvements like the Phone Hub and the new Material You-style ChromeOS interface. Another often overlooked area that ChromeOS has improved in is sound design, and as Google teased in a blog post, there is more to come.
After adding charging and battery-related sounds to the OS in September 2023, the company now confirmed in a blog post that “ChromeOS is ready for any additional sounds the team may want to add down the line,” with the current sounds possibly being “just the first notes of an oncoming symphony.”
In the blog post, Google explains its reasoning behind the sound design. When you plug in your Chromebook and have audio turned on, it now makes a faded-in piano sound to give auditory feedback for the action. Henry Daw, the senior UX sound designer at Google who created the sound, describes it as “this faded-in piano that plays a nice G major chord.” If you have a Pixel phone, the sound may even feel familiar. Daw explains, “From the beginning, I felt it was important to build on the existing foundation that we already have at Google, specifically the charging sounds for Pixel phones.”
In fact, this sound comes in three variations that indicate how much charge is left. When you plug in at over 80%, the sound gets some kind of “sparkle-dusted” quality. Below that, Google describes the sound as a “cheerful ‘swoop’” that turns into a more high-pitched and noticeable chime when the battery is below 15%. Henry describes it as “kind of like the computer saying, ‘Phew, thanks. I really needed that.’” There is also a Pixel-style tripe-chime warning when your battery drops below 15 minutes of charge left.
Beyond giving your computer more personality, the sound design also serves as an accessibility feature. Those with visual impairments can rely on the sound to get a rough idea of what their charge is at without resorting to their screen reader software.
The company also described how it had to start from scratch to add the system sounds. Since ChromeOS hasn’t featured any sounds in the past, developers had to build a new framework so that the operating system would be able to play them in the first place, consistently across all kinds of hardware configurations. With these building blocks in place, it might truly not take long until ChromeOS gets more system sounds.
Thanks: Nick
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