ChromeOS Flex might finally come to the most obvious place

ChromeOS Flex launched back in 2022 to revitalise your old Mac and PC devices with a lightweight operating system. But, why not old ChromeOS machines? It may come soon.

If you’ve got an old PC or Mac lying around, with it starting to gather dust a long time ago because it had just gotten too slow and was no longer getting software updates, then ChromeOS Flex is potentially a neat solution.

The software loads a super lightweight version of Google’s operating system onto your old device, making it useful once again. But, for now, it isn’t available for old Chromebooks. That may be about to change.

According to Chrome Unboxed, Google is in the “early stages” of bringing ChromeOS Flex to old Chromebooks. The outlet landed on this notion as they were trawling through the innards of the technology behind Google Chrome (called Chromium Repositories) and found something interesting.

Robby Payne of Chrome Unboxed states that he found a reference to “Flexor” which he then found indicated some kind of ChromeOS Flex initiative. In short, his conclusion is that this appeared to be an OS image being tested as part of ChromeOS. As such “Flexor” appears to be a version of ChromeOS Flex that can run on Chromebooks, but this remains unconfirmed.

So, what does that mean for users? If a version of ChromeOS Flex comes to ChromeOS devices, then you could see modern software come to your old laptops, devices and desktops. Say, you’ve got one of the OG Chromebooks from Google, like the Pixelbook, and it just doesn’t seem up to the task anymore, enter ChromeOS Flex. This would likely also mean much longer support for these older machines, meaning you could use them for years to come.

However, it is worth bearing in mind that ChromeOS Flex isn’t exactly the same as ChromeOS with several quirks coming from its need to be a more lightweight operating system.