Android 12L increases Chrome usage 18 times on large-screen devices

A few months ago, Android 12L was released as a Beta version, a version specifically for foldable devices, tablets, and Chrome OS devices. In order to promote the usability improvements of applications on large-screen devices, Google now shares some statistics about the usage of its Chrome browser.

Google says the development team has been experimenting with several features to ensure that desktop Chrome and large-screen devices (such as foldable devices and tablets) have consistent features for multitasking and productivity.

The team took advantage of Android 12L features such as the taskbar and Samsung edge panel to allow people to open and use multiple Chrome windows at the same time. The idea is to ensure that users can multitask and still use this functionality within the constraints of the device (such as memory utilization).

Testing showed that people could comfortably use up to 5 instances of Chrome side by side, so the app was updated to support this use case. The new window shortcut is also displayed more prominently in the menu so that users can discover and take advantage of it.

Google's results show that multi-window usage increased by 18 times. The company's previous research showed that Chrome browser multi-instance usage was already 42% higher on tablets and foldable devices compared to phones, a statistic that improves on. Google hopes that by sharing its learnings and data, it will encourage more developers to build optimized features that are also targeted at large-screen devices, especially when it comes to Android 12L.