Google Chromebook · desktop settings

ChromeOS Settings: the twelve-section Chromebook menu, and the eighteen it replaced

Chromebook Settings is a web page that looks like an app: a sidebar of sections on the left, cards on the right, and a search box that most people use instead of either. This page walks the sidebar as it stands in ChromeOS 151, explains the 2024 reorganisation that cut it from eighteen sections to twelve, and links each one to a screen you can open. The trees are extracted from the Chromium source.

Newest release here
ChromeOS 151
Versions you can open
3
Top-level sections
12
Rows in the tree
869
ChromeOS 151 home screen in the simulator
Open ChromeOS 151 in the simulator →

How ChromeOS organises its Settings

The M151 sidebar is short. Network, Bluetooth and Connected devices handle the radios and the paired Android phone. Accounts and Kerberos cover sign-in. Device is where the hardware lives: Mouse, Touchpad, Keyboard and inputs, Stylus, Display, Audio, Power and Storage, which makes it the longest page in the list. Wallpaper and style opens the personalisation hub rather than a settings page.

Privacy and security carries the permission controls, sync, screen privacy and the Lock-on-leave switch. Apps collects app management, notifications, the Google Play and Linux environments. Accessibility is a full section with ChromeVox, Select-to-speak, Dictation and the cursor options. System preferences absorbed what used to be Date and time, Languages and inputs, Files, Search and Assistant and Reset settings. About ChromeOS closes the list with the update channel, diagnostics and the developer environments.

What changes between versions

Three milestones are here. ChromeOS 120 predates the wayfinding revamp: eighteen sections, with Date and time, Languages and inputs, Files, Printers and scanners, Developers and Reset settings each a row of their own and About ChromeOS parked below an Advanced divider. ChromeOS 124 is the flat twelve-item menu behind a flag. In ChromeOS 151, from Chromium 151, the revamp is simply what ships, and the sections carry the rows the current source declares.

Three settings worth knowing the path to

  1. Settings > Privacy and security > Lock-on-leave

    The Chromebook locks itself when the camera sees you walk away. It sits under Screen privacy, a heading most people scroll past on the way to the permission switches.

  2. Settings > About ChromeOS > Change channel

    Stable, Beta or Dev. It is the one row on the About page that can change what the whole system looks like, and it is where Chromium testers spend their time.

  3. Settings > System preferences > Power

    Idle behaviour, Battery saver and the sleep-when-lid-closed switch moved here in the revamp; before M124 they were under Device. Search for Power and both places still answer.

Questions people ask about ChromeOS settings

Why does my Chromebook's Settings list look longer than this?

You are probably on an older ChromeOS. Milestone 120 and earlier show eighteen sections with an Advanced divider; from M124 the list is twelve sections and Advanced is gone. Both are in the simulator.

Where are Date and time and Languages in ChromeOS Settings?

Inside System preferences since the revamp, together with Files, Search and Assistant, Startup and Reset settings. ChromeOS 120 in the simulator still lists them separately.

Are these the real ChromeOS menus?

They are generated from the Chromium OS Settings source at each milestone, so the sections, rows and wording are the project's own. Network names and device names are samples.