Google announced Friday that the latest Chromebook update includes a feature that tells you if your USB-C cable has limited functionality. Because USB-C cables can have widely varying capabilities, such as different charging and data transfer speeds on a cable-by-cable basis, this new Chromebook feature appears to be a useful tool for troubleshooting.
“Eligible Chromebooks will notify you if the USB-C cable you’re using does not support displays or is not performing optimally for your laptop,” Google writes in a blog post. “You’ll also receive an alert if the cable you’re using does not support the high-performance USB4 / Thunderbolt 3 standards that your Chromebook does.” According to the blog, the new feature will be available first on Chromebooks with 11th or 12th Gen Intel Core CPUs that support USB4 or Thunderbolt, “with more devices to follow.”
Google is well aware of some of the issues with USB-C cables, with employee Benson Leung making headlines with his tests and reviews of USB-C cables, including one that ruined his Chromebook Pixel. The situation has improved since then, but it can still be difficult to know which USB-C cable does what, so Google’s new notification is a welcome addition to its Chromebooks, and we can thank Benson and the rest of the team for that.
A few new features are also included in the new update. Google is updating the split-screen magnifier feature so that you can resize the magnified portion of the screen to see more or less of the zoomed-in area.
