Got A New Chromebook? 10 Things You Need To Know By Chrome Unboxed

So you just got a Chromebook, it's not steep, but there is a learning curve. If you're coming from Windows or Mac, it's okay, chrome unboxed is here to help look. There are tons of people like us who have spent lots of time in Chrome OS using Chromebooks, and they're just very familiar with all of this stuff, and so, as we look up things, we write articles. It's really easy to forget. There are tons of people that are just now starting to pick up Chrome, OS and Chromebooks, and so we wanted to make a video for you guys, and so, if you're watching this, and you're someone who's been using Chrome OS for a while. This video is probably not for you.

You may find something in here that you didn't know about, but likely this is going to be more for your friend or family member, who is just now getting into Chrome OS and needs a Quick-start guide and some tools to help them use their Chromebook. As someone who has been using Chromebooks for six months or a year, and so we will provide ten very simple things that can kind of get you jump-started in your overall experience, but before we get into those 10 tips, here's a freebie to get us started. Word VPN is the VPN of choice for millions of users. It is the simplest and easiest way to secure your browsing data, whether you're on a Chromebook or you're, on a Windows device or a Mac or a phone or Android iOS, any of them all you have to do is go over to chroma and box comm for it slash Word VPN to get started today. Alright, so let's get started tip number one plug in your Chromebook.

Now, when you unbox it, it's going to be tempting to pull all the wrapping off open it up and hit the power button 99 times out of 100. That's not going to do anything, and we know because we've unboxed a lot of Chromebooks around here Google, for whatever reason, I'm sure it has something to do a safety or something sets these in such a way that when they pack them up, they need to be plugged in to the outlet for at least a few seconds before they will power on and connect the battery up to the motherboard so get it out plug it in probably for just a couple seconds that will wake the device up, and you can be off and running tip number two you're going to need a Google account and I know a lot of people get really uptight. Whenever someone says hey, you need to sign up for yet another thing, but you need to know that a Google account in general isn't just another thing. It's kind of the gateway to using a Chromebook to its fullest potential and there's not really a way to use it. Without one sure you can jump in guest mode and that's one of the options when you go to log in, and you'll use guest mode from time to time.

Somebody will need to use your Chromebook log out pop it in the guest mode and let him go to town when they log out everything they did is gone. That's great, and it's one of the great things about Chromebooks is that they are account driven, meaning all the things you set up. All the things you download all the things you do all the stuff that you accumulate, follows that account, and so we're talking about settings Wi-Fi passwords. All of that stuff is logged into your personal account so that, if you drop this Chromebook lose this Chromebook move on to another Chromebook need to just jump into another Chromebook. You can just log in give it a few seconds to sync up and everything you had set up on your device will be at your disposal on this other device.

A Google account is kind of the keys to the kingdom. Here, it's going to give you access to Google Docs gonna, give you access to Gmail to Google Calendar Google, Photos Google everything, basically it's all tied to that account. So it is something that is absolutely necessary and again one of the cool parts about it is with all this stuff being connected to your account. You can also lend your Chromebook to other people, let them sign in with their account all their stuffs there. It's all siloed, you can't get to it.

They can't get to your stuff, it's all completely separated, and you can jump back and forth between accounts really quickly and really easily by logging out or just switching accounts, and so it is brings a lot of power to the table and so don't be afraid of signing up for that. Google account you'll need it, you'll use it, and it will make your Chromebook experience really, really great number three use your ports. Chromebooks come with all kinds of ports, and some of them are going to be USB see only some of them are going to be a mix of USB, C and USB. A're going to have SD card slots and headphone microphone jacks. The point is use them, because Chrome OS takes very good advantage of these ports.

Lots of stuff works with Chromebooks. You can plug all sorts of things, and so, if you're even curious about whether it would work with your Chromebook plug it in and see SD cards, work to offload, storage and videos and footage, and all that kind of stuff and printers you can plug them right in portable hard drives, work really, really well and wireless and wired, keyboards and mice, and all of these peripherals just work plug it in and see and- and you might be surprised of what will work with the ports on your Chromebook number four giving around your settings now. Chrome OS is pretty simplified as an operating system, but there still are a lot of settings to choose from. So if you go down to the system tray and like where the clock is and then hit your gear, icon, you're going to see a long list of settings and to be honest with you, even after years of using these I, couldn't even tell you exactly where all the things are that I go and tweak, because I never actually navigate straight to them. I go straight to the search bar type.

What I'm looking for it highlights it I, go there and change it so, whether you're looking for passwords or you're gonna change, something on your keyboard or whatever setting. It is your. Looking for font sizes, all that kind of stuff just start typing right up there in that search bar find what you're looking for and get right to it. It's actually insanely simple, but if you don't use that search bar the settings can be a little overwhelming number five: how to extend your display for some of you getting this device. You're going to be wanting to get some work done on it and be productive, and luckily Chrome OS does a great job at extending displays.

All you got to do if you've got HDMI on your particular Chromebook is hook an HDMI cable into the Chromebook and into the display you want to go to whether it's a monitor or TV chrome OS will recognize it. Some of you are only going to have USB type-c rest assured USB type-c on Chromebooks always has a display out function. You just need an adapter to do that. You can find them on Amazon, we'll link one in the description below, but once you've got it hooked up. There's going to be a notification that will pop up your click on that notification.

It's gonna, take you right to the spot in your settings where you actually get to arrange how those screens are aligned, and so you want to align them. Basically, the way that you have them physically, like I, like my monitor up here with my actual Chromebook beneath it, I drag it in that way. That way, once you've done that the mouse cursor can go from screen to screen exactly as you would expect, as if they're exactly there in physical space and so the setup is super, super easy. If you don't quite get everything you want, maybe you want to change the resolution on one of the monitors or something like that. You need to get back again.

Go back to the earlier tip on the settings open that settings panel up type in display, you'll see it right. There click in, and you can change those things as you see fit onto number 6. That's keyboard shortcuts, you're, gonna notice, right out of the box that, if you've not used a Chrome OS device before the keyboard, looks a little different in that top row function keys. They do kind of what you expect. You know forward back refresh escape that kind of stuff is pretty straightforward.

There are a couple function keys up there's one kind of like a box, you hit it, it's actually gonna, take whatever you're looking at and go full screen and the one next to it that looks like three boxes will actually go into an overview mode, and we're gonna talk about that mode here in just a second with the trackpad, but I'm not really talking about the stuff. That's right there in your face on the keyboard, I'm talking about keyboard, shortcuts things where you can hit a combination of keys and do different stuff and Chrome OS is kind of loaded up with them. There's lots and lots of different things, but simple stuff like copy and paste. For instance, you know control V control, C control, X work, exactly like you would expect them to those are the ones I use a lot. Some people are looking for the delete button, not the backspace, alt backspace gives you delete button, but you can see every single one of these keyboard shortcuts if you hit CTRL alt shift in the question mark, and so once you do that it's going to bring up a searchable database of every shortcut that you can access on your keyboard number seven, navigating your trackpad Google's done a perfect job with Chromebooks across the board, regardless, if they're, cheap, or they're really expensive, of making good trackpads a necessity, and because of that, all the gestures work on all Chromebooks since I want to talk through a couple of those gestures that are really, really helpful in day-to-day use.

So we'll talk about one finger gestures first, which is basically just pointing, but you do have the option of choosing in your settings whether you want to be able to tap to click or actually click the trackpad down to click. Moving on to two fingers, if you want a right-click or a context, menu to come up, you can tap or click with two fingers onto the trackpad and get that and then, if you want to scroll a page or scroll up down anything or whether you're in an app or whatever, you want to move the content up and down two finger scrolls moves that content up and down. Moving on to three finger gestures, you can swipe up or down, depending on which way you've got that set in your settings on your trackpad with three fingers and get an overview mode to see all of your open windows. And then you can swipe left and right with three fingers on your trackpad. If you have multiple tabs open on any single instance of Chrome and move between those tabs quickly and for me one of my favorite gestures on Chromebooks in general and when I go to Windows or Mac or something else I sorely missed that feature.

The last one I want to mention is three fingers: click to close if you're clipped on to or hovering over a tab. Three-Finger click can close. That tab, where you don't have to go hunting for the little X button there, but the gestures in general always work, and they work really fluidly, and they work really well and Google has done a good job of making sure that that experience is the same regardless if you paid $150 for your Chromebook or a thousand number eight navigating the tablet UI. So as of Chrome OS 70 that came out a few months ago, Google really overhauled the entire tablet interface. So if you've got a chrome, OS tablet or a convertible, the minute you put it into tablet mode you're going to notice some things have changed, and one of those is the desktop kind of gets replaced by the app drawer and the app drawer can be swiped through you pick an app and open it up and exactly as you would expect to once, it's open another cool trick you can do is to go between.

Another app is just swipe right up from the bottom. The app tray will kind of take over the page. Again, you can choose something if you choose to back out of that swipe back down. You're right back into your app, if you swipe down from the top you're met with a couple options, you can move the app over into side by side mode, so you can kind of do a split screen. Multitasking then choose another app to open there, or you can drop it down into the overview mode.

Where you see all of your open windows and from there flick up any of those or hit the X in the corner to close those apps out and then, if you just choose one of those apps in that overview mode, you'll see that app full screen again and again from that spot, you can kind of move around using these gestures in any way you see fit number 9 leveraging, Android and Linux on your device. Now you may have noticed already there's a little Play Store icon, either down on your shelf or in your app tray and if you choose- and you would like to leverage Android apps on your device- click that button, the Play Store will kind of get set up, and you'll have access to most of the Play Store and you can download and try apps, and some of them are great and some of them just are not formatted for the big screen. But you can try and see what you like. If you don't like it, you can go into settings, you can go to the Play Store settings and just turn the whole thing off. It's kind of up to you and Linux is the same way too.

If you're not familiar with a terminal, and you don't really know what to do with Linux just leave, it turned off for right now. But if you do- and you want to experiment- you want to get in there and mess around with some things there, you can actually just go to again go to the Linux section flip it on, and it will go through an installation process, and you'll have a terminal where you can start installing things via the terminal. Just like you would on any other Linux device. And so, if you have no idea what I mean when I say a terminal again, probably a good idea to let that one rest and for our final tip, tip number 10 power, wash your Chromebook and me. Don't necessarily mean power wash it right now, especially if you're watching this video on it, but in general, if anything, goes wrong or anything's out of place.

You've got too much junk installed, or you just want a fresh start, or you want to hand it off to somebody, or you need to return your device. The power wash is the way to go. It's very simple: to get to go to your settings search power, wash it's the only thing. That's going to come up click, it agrees. Vs I want to power wash my device and within just a couple of minutes.

This thing is going to be back to factory settings. It's not like resetting other devices like Windows or Mac devices, where it takes time, and you got to just sit there and wait on it. It really is a very, very quick and painless experience, and so, if you're in into any problems whatsoever, a power wash is the way to go, and since everything is hooked up to your Google account the minute you power wash it, and you need to sign back in all of your stuffs gonna. Be there again, it's all going to be set up. It's all going to be laid out exactly the way that you left it, and so it's one of the beauties of using a Chromebook in general, alright guys! So that's it.

Those are our top 10 tips, getting started for new Chromebook users and sure there's plenty of other ones out there that we could talk about, and if there are some tips that you think hey. This is really important for new Chromebook users to see hit us up in the comments down below and if there's enough of them, we might make another one of these videos, but for right now, that's it for this one. If you liked it hit that thumbs up button subscribe down below and until next time, we'll see.

Source : Chrome Unboxed