Google Now desktop notifications have been enabled in Chrome’s Canary channel.
The feature, which delivers a wide range of contextually-aware notifications, including weather forecasts, stock market information, traffic reports and sports scores, has played a central role Google’s mobile experience on Android and iOS.
The latest update to the Chrome Canary channel finally brings the feature to the desktop.
According to Google not every card type available on Android will be on offer in Google Now for Chrome. For contextual alerts based on location, cards default to using the location as reported by your mobile device.
Set Up Google Now on Chrome
Google Now on Chrome is currently only available in Canary builds on Mac and Windows. It also requires Now to be set up and configured on Android or iOS, and linked to the same Google account that you use in Chrome.
As Canary, which is updated daily, runs alongside stable, beta and dev versions of Chrome on the desktop it offers a relatively safe way to toy with new features ahead of time.
Provisos out of the way, on to setting it up.
- Open Canary
- Make sure that you’re signed in to the Google account
- In a new tab go to: chrome://flags/#enable-google-now
- Change the setting from ‘Default’ to ‘Enabled’
- Click the ‘Relaunch Now’ prompt at the bottom of the page
Once configured open the Notification Centre by hitting the small bell icon in the system tray to view any available cards.
Disable Google Now in Chrome
Google make turning the feature off easy as pie. Just open Notification Centre, click the ‘cog’ icon to access settings, then uncheck the box next to ‘Google Now’.
