Android Parallel Tasks Brings Background App Support To Chrome OS 64

Chrome OS fans will soon be receiving a feature that many have been wanting since support for Android apps rolled out. The new feature is Android Parallel Tasks, and it is tipped for release in Chrome OS 64. This feature will give Chromebook users the ability to have Android apps continue to run in the background when they click away.

Currently, if you are running an app or game that needs real-time data like Google Analytics, the second you click away from that app it pauses. With Android Parallel Tasks, the apps would continue to run in the background, just as you would expect on other desktops running Windows, Linux, or macOS.

The way Android apps stop running on Chrome OS now is a throwback to the way apps normally work on a smartphone to prevent your battery from depleting too quickly. Parallel tasks will let everything you have running on your Chrome OS device going until you specifically pause the activity or close the app down.

The video below shows Parallel Tasks in action to give you an idea what is going on. The updated OS is in the beta channel right now and when running apps side by side at once, there is no issue with pauses, lost data, or odd behavior of the UI that users might have noticed in the past.

It’s worth noting that while Android Parallel Apps is running in the Chrome OS 64 beta, that is no guarantee that the feature will make it to the stable version of Chrome 64 when it launches. Earlier this month Chrome 63 for desktop launched and brought with it improved security, but that improvement did bring with it greater memory usage.