Exclusive: Google is experimenting with bringing Chrome OS to Android

Although Google originally designed the Android operating system around smartphones, it has since updated it to work on other form factors such as tablets, watches, TVs and car dashboards. However, to compete in the PC market, Google created Chrome OS instead of just using Android. Over the years, Google has made the two operating systems more synergistic. For example, Chrome OS directly ships with a copy of the Android runtime so Chromebooks can run Android apps. The reverse — Android devices running Chrome OS software — isn’t possible right now, but that could change in the future as Google tests a method for running Chrome OS on Android devices.

It’s no secret that many modern Android devices are packed with enough storage, memory, and raw processing power to handle any computing task the average person would throw at them. Since it already has Chrome OS, Google never felt compelled to make Android more like Windows or macOS. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t tried. In fact, there was a time when Google was actively working on creating a hybrid of Android and Chrome OS – codenamed Andromeda – which was eventually abandoned. The reason Google abandoned its plans to merge Android and Chrome OS was that both platforms were already successful, so it would be more productive for the company to focus on improving each platform.

“It doesn’t make sense for us to merge [Chrome OS and Android],” said Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s vice president of Android, Chrome OS and Play, in late 2016, during an episode of the (now defunct) All about Android podcast. He added: “They are both successful. We just want to make sure both sides benefit from each other.” That’s why Android borrows seamless updates from Chrome OS, and why Chrome OS added support for Android apps. “You’re going to see a lot more of that happening when we kind of cross-pollinate,” Lockheimer said later in the podcast. “But not a merger sort of thing.”

True to its word, there is no evidence today that Google plans to merge the two platforms. However, thanks to a relatively new feature of the Android platform, Google now has the ability to seamlessly run Chrome OS alongside Android. This is made possible by the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF), a feature introduced in Android 13 that provides a secure and private environment for executing highly sensitive code.

Although AVF was originally designed to run small workloads in a highly stripped-down build of Android loaded into an isolated virtual machine, there’s technically no reason why it couldn’t be used to run other operating systems. In fact, this was already demonstrated when developer Danny Lin got Windows 11 running on an Android phone in 2022. Google itself has never officially provided support for running anything other than its own custom build of Android called “microdroid ‘ in AVF, but this is no longer the case. The company has started offering official support for running Chromium OS, the open source version of Chrome OS, on Android phones via AVF and has even privately demonstrated it to other companies.

At a private event, Google recently demonstrated a special build of Chromium OS — codenamed “ferrochrome” — running in a virtual machine on the Pixel 8. However, Chromium OS was not shown running on the phone’s screen itself. Rather, it’s being designed on an external display, which is possible since Google recently enabled an in-display display on its Pixel 8 series. Time will tell if Google is thinking of positioning Chrome OS as a platform for its desktop ambitions and a rival to Samsung DeX .

Unfortunately, Google didn’t reveal at the event whether it plans to actually ship a build of Chromium or Chrome OS to existing or future devices. The company simply demonstrated that it is now possible to run Chrome OS alongside Android and gave smartphone makers the tools to do so. It’s possible that Google was just using the Pixel 8 as a test bed with no intention of ever bringing Chrome OS to any of its own devices, but we really hope that’s not the case. Virtualization is already an incredibly popular mechanism for running software built for another platform on existing hardware, and many flagship phones have more than enough power, space, and memory to run Chrome OS alongside Android. Hopefully Google will offer the ability to run Chrome OS alongside Android in a future device, because the revamped desktop mode we saw in a recent Android 15 beta looks far from finished.