Have you ever downloaded a file or taken a screenshot on your Chromebook? In most cases, you want to do something with the file or screenshot. Chrome OS has a neat experimental feature that makes working with screenshots and downloaded files super easy. It’s called a holding area and provides quick access to your recent files on your Chromebook. If so, here’s how to enable and use the holding area in Chrome OS.
How to Enable Grip on Chrome OS
As this is an experimental feature, it is not enabled by default on your Chromebook. You will need to use a Chrome flag to enable this feature, here is what you need to do.
- In Chrome, go to chrome://flags/.
- Look for a handle in the search bar at the top.
- Click the dropdown box and select ‘Enabled’ to enable the feature.
- Now restart your Chromebook by clicking (or tapping) the restart button at the bottom right of the screen.
How to Use Grip on Chrome OS
Now that you have the grip area enabled, let’s take a look at how to actually access and use the grip area on your Chromebook.
How to Access the Grip Area
After enabling the hold area, you will see a new icon on the taskbar to the left of the clock and battery icons. This is the icon used to hold space. You can click (or tap) it to open the waiting area and see the latest downloads and screenshots.
How to Pin Items in the Grip Area
When you hover over an item in the waiting area, you will see a pin icon in the corner. Simply click this icon to pin the item to the ‘Pinned items’ section above the waiting area.
This way you can ensure that important items are not replaced by newer screenshots or downloads in the waiting area.
Why is Space-Keeping Helpful?
Keeping space is useful for many reasons. Primarily, in my case, I use it to quickly access downloaded files and screenshots without having to open the Files app on my Chromebook.
Another nice feature that the grabber brings is the ability to directly drag and drop files from the holding area to other apps. This makes it super easy to drag and drop screenshots into emails and Quip documents. It’s also great if you want to easily open a screenshot in a photo editing software.
Use Grip on Chrome OS
This is how you can enable grab space in Chrome OS. This feature has been in development for a while, but only appeared in the stable version of Chrome OS with Chrome OS 87. Since it’s still behind a flag, Google is probably working on making this feature even better before launching it on Chrome OS. by default. But as mentioned above, saving space is a very useful Chrome OS feature that you should start taking advantage of almost immediately.
So, do you use standby space on your Chromebook? What do you use most often? Let us know in the comments.
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