You can now stream Android apps on your Chromebook

People have been waiting for the ability to stream their Android apps to their Chromebook for over a year. Now, the wait is coming to a close, as app streaming for ChromeOS is now out of beta testing, according to Engadget. However, there’s a bit of a catch for the time being.

Last year during CES, Google introduced us to app streaming for ChromeOS. This is a feature that allows you to stream an app directly from your Android phone to your Chromebook.

When you use the feature, you’ll see the app represented on the right side of your screen. You can interact with the app directly on your Chromebook, so you don’t need to wake up your phone to interact with it. Also, this gives you the mass majority of the functionality of the app. You can use the app and navigate to other apps if need be. For example, if you’re in Threads, and you choose to open a link in Chrome, it seamlessly navigates to Chrome so that you can use it.

The things that you can do are the obvious ones. These are the functions that require the phone’s hardware to function. So, don’t expect to use the camera app or something like Snapchat.

What’s neat about this feature is you don’t need to open the app on your phone first. When you open the app on your Chromebook, it will automatically open on your phone in the background. Just know that if you close the app on your phone, it will close on your Chromebook. Also, if you bring the app to the foreground on your phone, it will close on the Chromebook.

You can stream apps to your Chromebook, but it’s still limited

So, this is a fun capability, but it’s still new, so there are some limitations. For the time being, there aren’t many phones that are compatible with this functionality. For the time being, you can only use this feature on a Pixel 4a or later. Also, you can only use it with the Xiaomi 12T, 12T Pro, 13, and 13 Pro.

As for the Chromebook, Google didn’t specify any model or company. It just needs to be running the latest stable version of ChromeOS M115. Make sure that your Chromebook is up to date.