Initials on Chromebook Made Easy

Initial on chromebook

so you just got a Chromebook it's not steep but there is a learning curve if you're coming from Windows or Mac it's okay chrome unboxed is here to help [Music] look there are tons of people like us who have spent lots of time in Chrome OS using Chromebooks and they're just very familiar with all of this stuff and so as we look up things we write articles it's really easy to forget there are tons of people that are just now starting to pick up Chrome OS and Chromebooks and so we wanted to make a video for you guys and so if you're watching this and you're someone who's been using Chrome OS for a while this video is probably not for you you may find something in here that you didn't know about but likely this is gonna be more for your friend or family member who is just now getting into Chrome OS and needs a QuickStart guide and some some tools to help them use their Chromebook as someone who has been using Chromebooks for six months or a year and so we will provide ten very simple things that can kind of get you jump-started in your overall experience but before we get into those 10 tips here's a freebie to get us started Nord VPN is the VPN of choice for millions of users it is the simplest and easiest way to secure your browsing data whether you're on a Chromebook or you're on a Windows device or a Mac or a phone or Android iOS any of them all you have to do is go over to chroma and box comm for it slash Nord VPN to get started today alright so let's get started tip number one plug in your Chromebook now when you unbox it it's gonna be tempting to pull all the wrapping off open it up and hit the power button 99 times out of 100 that's not gonna do anything and we know because we've unboxed a lot of Chromebooks around here Google for whatever reason I'm sure it has something to do a safety or something sets these in such a way that when they pack them up they need to be plugged in to the outlet for at least a few seconds before they will power on and connect the battery up to the motherboard so get it out plug it in probably for just a couple seconds that will wake the device up and you can be off and running tip number two you're gonna need a Google account and I know a lot of people get really uptight whenever someone says hey you need to sign up for yet another thing but you need to know that a Google account in general isn't just another thing it's kind of the gateway to using a Chromebook to its fullest potential and there's not really a way to use it without one sure you can jump in guest mode and that's one of the options when you go to login and you'll use guest mode from time to time somebody will need to use your Chromebook log out pop it in the guest mode and let him go to town when they log out everything they did is gone that's great and it's one of the great things about Chromebooks is that they are account driven meaning all the things you set up all the things you download all the things you do all the stuff that you accumulate follows that account and so we're talking about settings Wi-Fi passwords all of that stuff is logged into your personal account so that if you drop this Chromebook lose this Chromebook move on to another Chromebook need to just jump into another Chromebook you can just log in give it a few seconds to sync up and everything you had set up on your device will be at your disposal on this other device a Google account is kind of the keys to the kingdom here it's going to give you access to Google Docs gonna give you access to Gmail to Google Calendar Google Photos Google everything basically it's all tied to that account so it is something that is absolutely necessary and again one of the cool parts about it is with all this stuff being connected to your account you can also lend your Chromebook to other people let them sign in with their account all their stuffs there it's all siloed you can't get to it they can't get to your stuff it's all completely separated and you can jump back and forth between accounts really really quickly and really easily by logging out or just switching accounts and so it it brings a lot of power to the table and so don't be afraid of signing up for that Google account you'll need it you'll use it and it will make your Chromebook experience really really great number three use your ports Chromebooks come with all kinds of ports and some of them are going to be USB see only some of them are going to be a mix of USB C and USB a you're gonna have SD card slots and headphone microphone jacks the point is use them because Chrome OS takes very good advantage of these ports lots of stuff works with Chromebooks you can plug all sorts of things and so if you're even curious about whether or not it would work with your Chromebook plug it in and see SD cards work to offload storage and and videos and and footage and all that kind of stuff and printers you can plug them right in portable hard drives work really really well and wireless and wired keyboards and and mice and all of these peripherals just work just plug it in and see and and you might be surprised of what will work with the ports on your Chromebook number four giving around your settings now Chrome OS is pretty simplified as an operating system but there still are a lot of settings to choose from so if you go down to the system tray and like where the clock is and then hit your gear icon you're gonna see a long list of settings and to be honest with you even after years of using these I couldn't even tell you exactly where all the things are that I go and tweak because I never actually navigate straight to them I go straight to the search bar type what I'm looking for it highlights it I go there and change it so whether you're looking for passwords or you're gonna change something on your keyboard or whatever setting it is you're looking for font sizes all that kind of stuff just start typing right up there in that search bar find what you're looking for and get right to it it's actually insanely simple but if you don't use that search bar the settings can be a little bit overwhelming number five how to extend your display for some of you getting this device you're gonna be wanting to get some work done on it and be productive and luckily Chrome OS does a great job at extending displays all you got to do if you've got HDMI on your particular Chromebook is hook an HDMI cable into the Chromebook and into the display you want to go to whether it's a monitor or TV chrome OS will recognize it some of you are only going to have USB type-c rest assured USB type-c on Chromebooks always has a display out function you just need an adapter to do that you can find them on Amazon we'll link one in the description below but once you've got it hooked up there's gonna be a notification that will pop up you click on that notification it's gonna take you right to the spot in your settings where you actually get to arrange how those screens are aligned and so you want to align them basically the way that you have them physically like I like my monitor up here with my actual Chromebook beneath it I drag it in that way that way once you've done that the mouse cursor can go from screen to screen exactly as you would expect as if they're exactly there in physical space and so the setup is super super easy if you don't quite get everything you want maybe you want to change the resolution on one of the monitors or something like that you need to get back again go back to the earlier tip on the settings open that settings panel up type in display you'll see it right there click in and you can change those things as you see fit onto number 6 that's keyboard shortcuts you're gonna notice right out of the box that if you've not used a Chrome OS device before the keyboard looks a little bit different in that top row function keys they do kind of what you expect you know forward back refresh escape that kind of stuff is pretty straightforward there are a couple function keys up there there's one kind of like a box you hit it it's actually gonna take whatever you're looking at and go fullscreen and the one next to it that looks like three boxes will actually go into an overview mode and we're gonna talk about that mode here in just a second with the trackpad but I'm not really talking about the stuff that's right there in your face on the keyboard I'm talking about keyboard shortcuts things where you can hit a combination of keys and do different stuff and Chrome OS is kind of loaded up with them there's lots and lots of different things but simple stuff like copy and paste for instance you know control V control C control X work exactly like you would expect them to those are the ones I use a lot some people are looking for the delete button not the backspace alt backspace gives you delete button but you can see every single one of these keyboard shortcuts if you hit ctrl alt shift in the question mark and so once you do that it's going to bring up a searchable database of every shortcut that you can access on your keyboard number seven navigating your trackpad Google's done a really good job with Chromebooks across the board regardless if they're cheap or they're really expensive of making good trackpads a necessity and because of that all the gestures work on all Chromebooks since I want to talk through a couple of those gestures that are really really helpful in day-to-day use so we'll talk about one finger gestures first which is basically just pointing but you do have the option of choosing in your settings whether you want to be able to tap to click or actually click the trackpad down to click moving on to two fingers if you want a right-click or a context menu to come up you can tap or click with two fingers onto the trackpad and get that and then if you want to scroll a page or scroll up down anything or whether you're in an app or whatever you want to move the content up and down two finger scroll moves that content up and down moving on to three finger gestures you can swipe up or down depending on which way you've got that set in your settings on your trackpad with three fingers and get an overview mode to see all of your open windows and then you can swipe left and right with three fingers on your trackpad if you have multiple tabs open on any single instance of Chrome and move between those tabs quickly and for me one of my favorite gestures on Chromebooks in general and when I go to Windows or Mac or something else I sorely missed that feature the last one I want to mention is three finger click to close if you're clipped on to or hovering over a tab three-finger click can close that tab where you don't have to go hunting for the little X button there but the gestures in general always work and they work really fluidly and they work really well and Google has done a good job of making sure that that experience is the same regardless if you paid $150 for your Chromebook or a thousand number eight navigating the tablet UI so as of Chrome OS 70 that came out a few months ago Google really overhauled the entire tablet interface so if you've got a chrome OS tablet or a convertible the minute you put it into tablet mode you're going to notice some things have changed and one of those is the desktop kind of gets replaced by the app drawer and the app drawer can be swiped through you pick an app and open it up and exactly as you would expect to once it's open another cool trick you can do is to go between another app is just swipe right up from the bottom the app tray will kind of take over the page again you can choose something if you choose to back out of that swipe back down you're right back into your app if you swipe down from the top you're met with a couple options you can move the app over into side by side mode so you can kind of do a split screen multitasking then choose another app to open there or you can drop it down into the overview mode where you see all of your open windows and from there flick up any of those or hit the X in the corner to close those apps out and then if you just choose one of those apps in that overview mode you'll see that app fullscreen again and again from that spot you can kind of move around using these gestures in any way you see fit number 9 leveraging Android and Linux on your device now you may have noticed already there's a little Play Store icon either down on your shelf or in your app tray and if you choose and you would like to leverage Android apps on your device click that button the Play Store will kind of get set up and you'll have access to most of the Play Store and you can download and try apps and some of them are great and some of them just are not formatted for the big screen but you can try and see what you like if you don't like it you can go into settings you can go to the Play Store settings and just turn the whole thing off it's kind of up to you and Linux is the same way too if you're not familiar with a terminal and you don't really know what to do with Linux just leave it turned off for right now but if you do and you want to experiment you want to get in there and mess around with some of the things there you can actually just go to again go to the Linux section flip it on and it will go through an installation process and you'll have a terminal where you can start installing things via the terminal just like you would on any other Linux device and so if you have no idea what I mean when I say a terminal again probably a good idea to let that one rest and for our final tip tip number 10 power wash your Chromebook and I don't necessarily mean power wash it right now especially if you're watching this video on it but in general if anything goes wrong or anything's out of place you've got too much junk installed or you just want a fresh start or you want to hand it off to somebody or you need to return your device the power wash is the way to go it's very simple to get to go to your settings search power wash it's the only thing that's going to come up click it agree vs I want to power wash my device and within just a couple minutes this thing is going to be back to factory settings it's not like resetting other devices like Windows or Mac devices where it takes time and you got to just sit there and wait on it it really really is a very very quick and painless experience and so if you're in into any problems whatsoever a power wash is the way to go and since everything is hooked up to your Google account the minute you power wash it and you need to sign back in all of your stuffs gonna be there again it's all gonna be set up it's all gonna be laid out exactly the way that you left it and so it's one of the beauties of using a Chromebook in general alright guys so that's it those are our top 10 tips getting started for new Chromebook users and sure there's plenty of other ones out there that we could talk about and if there are some tips that you think hey this is really important for new Chromebook users to see hit us up in the comments down below and if there's enough of them we might make another one of these videos but for right now that's it for this one if you liked it hit that thumbs up button subscribe down below and until next time we'll see [Music]