Here’s a change in ChromeOS dev that many of you will find trivial but a few, myself included, will find beautiful: a dark wallpaper picker.
In terms of functionality the re-coloured wallpaper pick is almost identical to the stable channel’s version; you can choose from a range of pre-defined wallpapers, or set your own.
But there are more subtle changes at play on closer inspection. These are designed to make the picker look more ‘app like’.
Picker Improvements
The new ‘dark picker’ currently features the following changes from the ‘stable’ version:
- Dark background & Window Decoration
- Status bar shows thumbnail along with artist info
- Download progress bar now appears on thumbnail
- Selected thumbnail has white-border
- Currently set wallpaper now denoted with tick
- New ‘All’ category
- Padding tweaks
One notable omission: you can no longer ‘cancel’ a wallpaper as it downloads. This feature, Chrome developers say, is unlikely to be missed.
So Why Dark?
Dark application backgrounds are often used by graphics-heavy applications. like video editors and photo editors.
But why? It’s all about the eyes.
A darker UI helps your eyes to focus more on the content and less on the border around it. Lighter UIs tend to “burn” the retina more, tiring out the eyes.
Available Soon
Look out for it landing in ChromeOS Stable sometime in the next few weeks.
For comparison here’s a shot of the current ChromeOS Wallpaper Picker as it looks in ChromeOS Stable:
