TL;DR
- We ran Google's Chrome OS alongside Android on Pixel smartphones.
- This is possible thanks to a special build of Chromium OS (an open source version of Chrome OS) made to run in virtual machines.
- It's not clear whether Google plans to make this available to the public.
Today we announced the news that Google is now able to run Chrome OS on Pixel smartphones. The company has created a special build of his Chromium OS (an open source version of Chrome OS) designed to run in a virtual machine. A demo of the project, known internally as “ferrochrome,” was shown privately to other companies at a recent Google event. After a little effort, I was able to compile and run my own build “Ferrochrome” on my Android smartphone. In the video embedded above, you can get your first look at Chrome OS running in a VM on a Pixel smartphone.
If you watch the video, you can see that the phone I chose for this demo is the Pixel 7 Pro, Google's flagship phone for 2022. This may also work with his other Tensor-powered Pixel devices, and in fact, my first choice is his Tensor-powered Pixel device. This demo was on my Pixel 8 Pro. Unfortunately, while the Chromium OS build I compiled booted successfully on the Pixel 8 Pro, it had a bug that prevented me from entering the setup wizard. I specifically wanted to demo this on the Pixel 8 Pro because it's the only phone in the Pixel lineup that supports display output. Unfortunately, I couldn't get this to work on my boyfriend's Pixel 8 Pro right away, so I decided to do a demo of “ferrochrome” on the Pixel 7 Pro instead.
Another thing I noticed from this video is that my Pixel 7 Pro isn't running Google's latest official stable or beta builds. Instead, I'm running a custom build of Android compiled from AOSP. The reason is that I had to use Google's VM Launcher app. VM Launcher is an Android app created by Google that calls the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) API to create and launch a virtual machine using configuration specified in a JSON file. Next, create a SurfaceView to display the VM when the app is displayed.
As you can see in the video, Chromium OS boots very quickly on the Pixel 7 Pro. Chromium OS builds don't have Google sign-in support by default, so I had to sign in to my guest profile. Networking didn't work out of the box, but this is a known issue and was fixed after running a script and adjusting some of his Chromium OS settings. Fortunately, my USB peripherals, such as my mouse and keyboard, were immediately recognized. The audio didn't work, but I know Google is actively working on a fix. I didn't have much time to play around with this before getting on the plane, but in my short time using it, performance seemed to be very snappy overall.
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In case you're wondering, the only reason we had to compile our own build of AOSP is because none of the Android builds Google offers for Pixel devices yet includes a VM Launcher app. Fortunately, thanks to a patch merged on April 9th, the VM Launcher app is now included in the Virtualization APEX module, so future Android builds of his should include this app by default. is. Unfortunately, you'll need to root your Android to try this out right now. This is because the VM Launcher app is disabled by default, but you can work around it by recompiling and changing the package name. This could work since the necessary permissions could theoretically be granted via ADB, but unfortunately the script that configures network access currently requires root access. Fortunately, Google's documentation states that scripts will no longer be needed in the future. This means that you can run his Chromium OS on any Android smartphone that supports AVF without needing root.
If you're wondering if you can run other operating systems, in theory you should be able to. However, Google's official public documentation states that as of April 2024, Chromium OS is “the only officially supported guest payload.” However, Google also said that it plans to add support for running more operating systems that support graphics in the future.