If you like customizing your desktop, you're going to love this upcoming Chrome OS feature

Google starts laying the groundwork for a future Personalization Hub

With the arrival of Android 12 and the Pixel 6, everyone's talking about Material You and how easy that makes it to quickly change the look and feel of your device. But why should smartphones get to have all the fun? A newly spotted flag in Chrome OS 98 Canary gives us our first hint at what Google may be working on to make Chrome just as easy to customize.

Chrome OS already gives users lots of ways to make it their own, including tons of curated wallpapers to choose from — and in the near future, it should be making it easier to add your own pics from Google Photos. But what the platform's lacked is an overarching approach to user customization, and that sounds like what we're about to be getting.

Chrome OS 98 Canary introduces the #personalization-hub flag (as spotted by Chrome Unboxed). Enabling it doesn't give you much of anything to look at right now, but the Personalization Hub description clearly spells out Google's intention: “to let users customize their wallpaper, screensaver, and avatars.”

Google's implementation here could go in any number of directions, but really we're just excited to see Chrome developers paying attention to customization to the extent that an entire hub is being built around the experience. Hopefully it won't be long before we finally get a look at what form the Personalization Hub UI ends up taking.

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