Microsoft and Dell are doing a great job with their Your Phone and Dell Mobile Connect apps in the Windows ecosystem. Taking a leaf from the same book, Google is also developing Phone Hub for Chromebooks which will act as a deeply integrated bridge between an Android smartphone and a Chromebook. The effort is to streamline the smartphone-to-desktop experience on Chromebooks. Basically, from now on, you won’t need Pushbullet or its alternatives to manage your smartphone on a Chromebook. So, on that note, let’s go ahead and learn how to enable Phone Hub on Chromebooks right now.
Enable Phone Hub on Chromebooks Now (2021)
Before we begin, let me clarify that you don’t need to upgrade to the Beta or Dev channel to preview Phone Hub on Chromebook. Just make sure you’re last Stable channel of Chrome OS 89 (or higher) and you are good to go. Other than that, to use Phone Hub, you need an Android smartphone. iOS compatibility is not yet on the roadmap. Finally, you must sign in with the same Google account on your smartphone and your Chromebook.
1. First, open Chrome and type chrome://flags in the address bar and press Enter. This will open the Chrome Flags page on your Chromebook.
2. Now search for “phone hub” and enable the flag from the drop-down menu. You can also paste chrome://flags/#enable-phone-hub in the address bar and press Enter to directly open the Phone Hub indicators page.
3. Once you have activated it, click on “To restart»In the lower right corner.
4. After your Chromebook restarts, you will find a smartphone icon on the Chrome OS shelf just to the left of the Quick Settings panel. Open it and click on “ To start“.
5. Finally, you will be redirected to the setup page where you can add your Android device which will be synced with the Chromebook. As you can see, you will receive smartphone notifications on your Chromebook and you will be able to do things like turn on hotspot, install apps remotely, find your phone, and more. Simply Select your device in the drop-down menu and click on “Agree and continue”.
6. That’s it. You will now find all your smartphone stuff in this menu and you can manage almost everything on your smartphone directly from the Chromebook.
7. If you have already set up a smartphone, you will find the option to enable Phone Hub on your Chromebook under Settings -> Connected devices -> Your Android smartphone -> Enable toggle for Phone Hub.
8. If the above steps do not work, I recommend you to disconnect existing smartphone from your Chromebook. After that, activate the flag and start again.
9. Finally, you can try to update Google Play services on your Android smartphone to the beta version. You can install Play Services Info (To free) to open the Play Services page on Play Store. After that, join the beta program and update the app. Now go ahead and enable the phone hub indicator on your Chromebook and check if it is working or not. If the beta program is complete, you can download the APK from here.
Receive smartphone notifications with Phone Hub on Chromebook
This is how you can enable Phone Hub on Chromebooks, no matter what channel you’re currently signed up to. As I mentioned above, I’m on Chrome OS 89 stable channel, and still Phone Hub works for me. It looks like Google has expanded A/B testing to more users, and that’s really good.
So I would ask you to go ahead and try your luck. Anyway, it all comes from us. For more Chrome OS tips and tricks, like enabling the Recycle Bin (Recycle Bin) on a Chromebook, follow our linked article. And if you face any issues, comment below and let us know.
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