Chapter 4 Understanding Your Chromebook

This section is part of “DataTrail”; however, it is not a required. While not required for completion of the DataTrail course set on Leanpub, it may be very helpful to you! It’s not required because you don’t need a Chromebook to complete the courses. The only requirement for all of these courses is an Internet browser and connection to the web. However, if you have a Chromebook and want to get better acquainted with how it works, this section is for you!

4.1 What is a Chromebook?

Chromebooks are a very specific type of computer produced by Google. Chromebooks aren’t exactly like normal computers and they have a few unique characteristics:

They are usually very cheap
They are designed mostly to use the web
You don’t “install” any software on the computer itself
Instead of “apps” and “software” you simply go to websites for your work

A simple way to think about it is that a Chromebook is a computer that only lets you use an Internet browser like Chrome. You can’t really do much on the computer itself. Some people call this way of working - working only through the Internet - “cloud computing”. It’s called cloud computing because the computer you are using most of the time is not the one sitting in front of you. You are using the Internet to access tools and computers to do your work. But the physical computers doing the work are stored somewhere else - it could be nearby or on the other side of the globe. That is why people call the computers “in the cloud”.

The goal of DataTrail is not that you have to use a Chromebook to finish the program, it is just that you could use a Chromebook to finish the whole program. You can finish the entire sequence of courses using any computer with an Internet connection and a web browser. Doing everything through a web browser has a couple of advantages for a training program like this:

All Chromebooks have the same system so if you log out of one Chromebook and log onto another you will always see the same system (unless there has been an update to Chrome Operating System - “OS” - that affects all Chromebooks).
Since everything is stored on the Internet (sometimes called “in the cloud”) then the Chromebook will always be set up with your preferences when you log off and log back on.
Everyone is using the same software through the websites, so it reduces problems that come from different people using different versions of each computer program on different operating systems.

Since Chromebooks are cheap and widely used, we expect many of the students who work on the class will use actual Chromebooks. In this chapter we will show you a little bit about how Chromebooks work, focusing on the Chrome OS operating system.

If you are used to using a “normal” computer it can take a little getting used to to adapt to a Chromebook. A couple of things that you will likely do differently are:

File storage: You won’t have much room for files on the Chromebook itself, so you won’t store them on your laptop, you will store them on “the cloud” in Google Drive or Dropbox.
Software: You won’t install any software on your Chromebook. You will instead make accounts on different websites or “web apps” that let you use tools through your web browser. For example you wouldn’t install a Twitter app on your computer, you’d browse to the Twitter website to use that software.

If you restrict yourself to only working in web browsers, doing everything will feel a little weird at first. It is sort of like writing a Haiku - a type of poem with a very specific set of rules. When you first start writing these poems it can be difficult to remember the rules. But after you get used to it the rules begin to come much more naturally. In a similar way, using a web browser for everything becomes second nature after a period of “learning the rules”.

Using Chromebooks to do data science is a relatively new idea and is only possible in the last few years. But increasingly the tools for doing data science are available through the web. It is more and more common to have to use the Internet to rent computers, do analyses, or distribute your results. So by learning to do data science on a Chromebook, you are preparing for a future where most analysis is done online.

4.2 Chrome OS

Your Chromebook is a little different than most normal Desktop computers. The main difference is that almost everything will be done in a Chrome web browser. For the most part, we won’t use any software that saves data directly to your computer with a few small exceptions. This doesn’t mean you are limited in what you can do as a data scientist. Rather, your work will be done in the “cloud”, rather than on your Chromebook directly.

When using a “normal” computer you usually download software that makes it possible to edit files, make presentations, use your calendar, or use social media. On a Chromebook there are three different ways that you can add new software to use.

Chrome Apps: Are apps that you “add” to Chrome. The user interface is just the Chrome Browser. Very often these apps are actually just a link to a website that lets you do something like manage your calendar or write a document. But sometimes they have other offline functionality.
Chrome Extensions: These are actually pieces of software that modify the way the Chrome Browser itself works. An example would be an ad blocker that prevents ads on webpages you visit in Chrome from being shown.
Android Apps: Many modern Chromebooks now support installing Android Apps. These are the same apps that you would get if you had an Android phone. These apps won’t run inside of a web browser, but will function just like an app on your phone.

You can think of all three of these extensions to Chrome OS as “Apps”. Not all Chromebooks support Android Apps and we want anyone to be able to complete the DataTrail Program if they have a Chrome web browser and an Internet connection. So we will mostly focus on Chrome Apps and Extensions for this course. But if you have Android Apps that you like on your phone and have a Chromebook that supports Android Apps then you can install those apps as well as we discuss in the next section.

4.2.1 Chrome “Apps”

Chrome Apps are software programs that run in the web browser. They can be as simple as a link to a website where the app runs or they can be actual pieces of software that download and run on your local Chrome computer.

When you set up your Chrome OS account and log in, there will be a number of Chrome Apps that are available to you by default. Some of the most useful ones are:

Google Docs: for creating, writing and editing formatted text documents (similar to Microsoft Word, but through the web browser)
Google Slides: for creating, writing and editing presentations (similar to Microsoft Office, but through the web browser)
Google Sheets: for creating, writing and editing spreadsheets (similar to Microsoft Excel, but through the web browser)

Google Docs, Slides and Sheets are three Chrome Apps that come installed on your Chromebook

We won’t go into too much detail about each of these apps here as we will cover them in a future class. For now we are just going to cover how to find these apps on your Chromebook, how to install and uninstall new ones, and how to organize them on your Chromebook.

4.2.2 Where do Chromebook Apps live?

When you log into your Chromebook for the first time you can see icons for some apps at the bottom of the screen. This set of apps that are visible from the main screen are called your “Shelf”.

The shelf is at the bottom of the screen

Once you have installed a Chrome App or Android App you can find it by by clicking the Launcher button on the lower left hand side of the screen. If you don’t see the app among the first set of apps if you click on the arrow at the bottom of the screen you will be taken to a large list of apps installed on your Chromebook.

You can click on the launcher button, then the arrow to see more apps

Another way to open the screen with your apps is to click on the Launcher button on your keyboard. On most Chromebooks this is a button that looks like a magnifying glass.

The keyboard launcher button looks like a magnifying glass

Once you have found the App you want to open, click on it. When you click on a Chrome App the Chrome Browser will open and be directed to the website where that piece of software lives. For example if you click on the Google Docs icon (the blue piece of paper) then you will be directed to the website https://docs.google.com/ which lets you edit and work with your Google Docs.

Clicking on the Google Docs icon will open Google Docs in the web browser.

4.2.3 The Shelf

Your “Shelf” is the set of apps that are viewable on the bottom of your Desktop. You can use your Shelf to provide easy access to the Chrome Apps that you use most often. That way you don’t have to remember the exact web address for your most frequently used websites.

You can “Pin” an app to the shelf by clicking with two fingers (sometimes called right clicking) on an app and then hovering over “Pin to Shelf” and letting go. For example you might want to pin your “Folder” with your local files to your Shelf so you can easily access it.

Pin an app by right clicking

You will then see the app on your Shelf so you can click on it to be taken directly to that Chrome App.

The app is now pinned to your shelf.

If you want to “Unpin” or remove an App from your Shelf you should right click on the app on the Shelf, hover over the Unpin command and let go. The App will then be removed from your shelf.

The app is now pinned to your shelf.

4.2.4 Websites as Chrome Apps

You can actually add any website you want to your shelf, not just the ones that have Chrome Apps. For example, we will be using Posit Cloud for a lot of the work in this course. There is not a Chrome App for Posit Cloud. But you can still add this website to your shelf.

You can do this by first navigating to the website you want to add. Then clicking on the three dots in the upper right hand corner of the Chrome Browser. This will open up a menu and you can move your cursor until it hovers over More Tools. Then you can move your cursor over Add to shelf… and let go.

Navigate to posit.cloud, move the cursor over More Tools, then Add to Shelf.

This should then open up a window where you can name the website you are linking to. Uncheck the box that says Open as Window so that your Chromebook knows this is a website you want to open. Then click Add to put the icon onto your shelf.

Uncheck Open as Window and click Add to add this website as an app.

Once you are done you will see an icon for Posit Cloud on your shelf so you will be able to quickly navigate to this web app in the future.

The posit.cloud icon now appears on your shelf.

4.2.5 The Chrome Web Store and Chrome Apps

Chrome Apps are pieces of software that can be run from the web browser. Sometimes you will need to download and install them on your Chromebook and sometimes they will just be an icon with a link to a particular website that lets you do some function.

We already talked about how you can install any webpage as a Chrome App directly. But many Chrome Apps can also be found in the Chrome Web Store. This is a website that lets you search and find Chrome Apps for your Chromebook, similar to Google Play for Android Apps or the App Store for Apple apps. You can get to the Chrome Web Store by clicking on the launcher button, then finding and clicking the Web Store icon.

Open the Chrome Web Store by clicking on the Web Store Icon.

You will be taken to the Chrome Web Store in your browser. You can filter by whether they are free, built by Google, or are able to run offline. The first thing we will do is click on Apps to ensure that we are searching only among Chrome Apps. As an example we will find and install the StackEdit app, which is useful for writing markdown documents that you will use throughout the DataTrail courses. One nice feature of StackEdit is that it can be used even when your Chromebook is offline. To find the app, we will search for StackEdit and then click return.

Search for stackedit on the Chrome Web Store.

This will show two options one as a Chrome App and one as a Chrome Extension. We will select the app version and click Add to Chrome. This will bring up a dialogue box that asks if you would like to add Stackedit. Click on Add and the app will be installed on your Chromebook.

Click add to Chrome and then Add to add the app to your Chrome browser.

You can then click the Launcher button in the lower left to see that the app has been installed.

StackEdit is now installed.

If you click on the StackEdit icon you’ll be taken to the app, which you can see is also run in the Chrome web browser, just like any website you would visit. The difference is that this website will let you write and save Markdown files.

StackEdit runs in the web browser.

4.2.6 Chrome Extensions

Chrome extensions are software programs that modify the way that the Chrome browser itself works. You can find and install them through the Chrome Web Store just like you can with Chrome Apps but they look and function slightly differently. Sometimes these extensions may do something very simple (like show you a funny picture when you open a new tab) or they might do something very important (like managing your passwords).

As an example we will install the Pocket Chrome extension. Pocket is an extension that lets you save a particular website or essay for reading when your Chromebook is offline. So if you know you will need to read a document you can save it to Pocket before you are traveling somewhere where you will not have Internet access and then retrieve and read it even when you are offline. You can open the Chrome Web Store just as we did previously and search for Pocket under the Extensions window.

Once you have found the extension you want, you can click on the extension and it will open a page where you can click on Add to Chrome if you do that and click add the extension will be added.

Click Add to Chrome to add the Pocket extension.

Chrome Extensions often show up as a small icon in the top right hand side of the Chrome Browser. You can click on the icon to bring up the Pocket extension - which will also come up as a web page in your web browser.

The Pocket extension comes up as a web browser.

If you sign up for the Pocket extension you can then navigate to a web page that you are interested in saving for later and click the Pocket icon in the top right hand side of the screen.

Click the Pocket icon to save the webpage

This will save the page for later so that you can read it offline.

The page is now saved for offline reading

Extensions, like Chrome Web Apps, can improve the way that Chrome OS functions in the same way that installing software on your local computer works. Extensions and Apps help you use your Chromebook to accomplish tasks that would not otherwise be possible.

4.3 Chrome Browser

A Chromebook is designed to primarily be an Internet browser. In other words, it mostly will only allow you to open up websites and navigate between them. Chromebooks use Chrome OS - this is like Windows on a Microsoft computer, Android on your phone, or OS X on your Apple computer. It is the main software that runs your computer.

But unlike “normal” computers Chrome OS basically only allows you to use an Internet browser. Chromebooks use Google Chrome, Google’s Internet browser. When you are using a Chromebook, almost all of the time you will be interacting with the world through Chrome. When you have opened up your Chromebook you will see something like this.

Chromebook opening screen

The first thing you notice is that there is nothing on the “Desktop” and that all the “apps” are linked to from the bottom of the screen. This is called the “shelf” on a Chromebook. All the apps are basically just links to websites. To open a new Chrome Browser you can either click on the Chrome icon in the lower left of the screen or you can hold down the ctrl key and press the n key. We write this combination of keys as ctrl+n. If you do that you’ll see a new Chrome browser pop up.

Chrome browser

Here you can navigate to new websites and do all the usual things. At the bottom of the page are websites you visit frequently. In Chrome if you press the little square box (or boxes) in the top right hand side it will either maximize the size of a browser to fill the whole screen, or shrink it enough that you can drag the browser around.

Chrome browser

Click that box until the browser doesn’t fill the whole window. You can then create a second browser window by again using the ctrl+n command.

Multiple Chrome browsers

If you want to do more than one thing at once you can do it in multiple windows like this. But it is often easier to see what you are doing if you use tabs instead of windows. You can close one of the browser windows by clicking the X in the upper right hand corner or by holding down ctrl and pressing w.

Closing a window

With only one browser window open you can then open a new tab by holding down the ctrl key and pressing the t key (we will call this ctrl+t).

Opening a new tab

Now you can flip back and forth between tabs by clicking on the top of the tab in the browser. You can open more tabs by pressing ctrl+t again. You can close them by pressing the x in the top right corner of the tab or pressing ctrl+w.

Closing a tab

We’ll learn more about Chrome Apps later but for now if you press one of the other icons at the bottom of the screen then it will also open a Chrome window. The only difference is that it will go to a specific website for that icon. For example if you press the little blue paper icon you will open up a Google Doc.

Open a Google Doc

You can see that the Google Doc app is just another web browser but sent to a specific website - the website for Google Docs.

Google Docs website

Signing in to Chrome using your Gmail account automatically signs you in to all Google services including YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive, and others. This is particularly useful since you don’t have to sign in to websites that use Google services when you go to them with your web browser. For example if you click on the Gmail icon - the envelope - on your shelf in the bottom left corner of the screen you’ll be taken to the Gmail website and then logged in to your account.

You are already logged into Gmail when you log into your Chromebook

If you open a second tab by again clicking the Google Docs icon on your shelf in the bottom left corner of your screen, you’ll have two tabs open. You can separate the two tabs into two different windows by clicking on the top part of the Google Docs tab and dragging the Google Docs tab away from the Gmail tab.

You can drag to separate tabs

You can also put two windows together into a single window with multiple tabs. To do this, click on the tab at the top of the Google Docs window and drag it until it is close to the tab for Gmail. When you let go both tabs will go together into a single window.

You can drag to combine tabs into a single window

Finally, if you want to keep track of websites you use frequently you can use bookmarking. You can “bookmark” pages that you visit regularly and Chrome will keep track of those websites for you. It’s especially helpful if you don’t want to type the full address of a webpage, visit a page frequently, or are afraid you will forget about a page you will need later. To bookmark a webpage in Chrome, simply click on the star in the address bar or pressctrl+d on your keyboard. This will open the following window.

Bookmark Menu

If you click on “Done”, the bookmark will be saved to the Bookmarks bar. Next time you like to check the webpage you bookmarked without typing the address, you can click on the Chrome menu in the top-right corner, hover over Bookmarks, then click the bookmark you’d like to open.

Bookmarks

Those are the basics of how you manipulate windows and tabs in the Chrome browser. In the following lessons we’ll learn more about how you can use these windows to take advantage of the web through your Chromebook.

4.4 Android Apps

Android is an operating system that was made available by Google and now powers most of the mobile phones in the world. Android is not the same thing as Chrome OS even though the two systems are both produced by Google. Until recently the only kind of apps you could install on a Chromebook were Apps and Extensions as we discussed in the last section.

But Google has started to support the use of Android Apps on a small but growing number of Chromebooks. If you have one of these Chromebooks it is now possible to use the same apps you use on your phone on your Chromebook.

Android Apps are now available on Chromebooks

Chromebook Apps are stored in the same place on your Chromebook as Chrome Web Apps and Extensions. In fact, just by looking at the Shelf or your list of Apps you won’t be able to tell which are Chrome Apps and which are Android Apps. So to get started, we do the same thing as we did in the previous section, click on the Launcher button to show a list of potential apps. You can again click the arrow to view more apps if the Play Store does not appear among the first set of apps

Find the Google Play App

The first time you click on ‘Play Store’ will bring you to the Google Play Terms of Service. After reading the Terms of Service, if you agree to the Terms click on ‘Agree’ in the bottom right-hand side of the window.

Google Play Terms of Service

The following window will ask you to accept the Google Play Terms of Service. Here, you will need to click ‘ACCEPT’ to get to Google Play’s apps if you agree with the Terms of Service.

You must accept terms of service to install Android Apps

This will bring up Google Play where you can install Android Apps. This is the same place you would go if you have an Android Phone and you were going to install an App on your phone.

The Google Play Store

We will install the Basecamp app that can be used for communication with teams and is frequently used by data scientists. First we search for the app in the Google Play Store.

Search for the Basecamp App

When you find the Basecamp app you will be taken to a page where you can click Install to install the app. You may be asked to agree to terms and Google Play may ask you to enter payment details. However, if you are only going to use free apps you can find the small grey Skip box and skip over entering this information. Once you install the app it will appear as any other app on your Chromebook.

Install the Basecamp App

However one key difference is that if you click on the Basecamp icon and open the app then you will see that it does not open in a browser window.

Click on the Basecamp icon to open Basecamp

Android Apps are not Chrome Apps so are not accessed through the web browser. In this case, they will open in a separate window. Even though they don’t open in a web browser, many apps, including Basecamp, still require an Internet connection to be fully functional. Others may be more useful when used entirely offline.

The app is working in a window, but not a Chrome Browser

4.5 Chromebook Shortcuts

When we discussed the Chrome Browser we learned a couple of keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts are combination of keys that make your Chromebook do certain functions. For example, if you hold the ctrl key and press the n key you get a new Chrome window. When we want to tell you to press this key combination we will use the symbols ctrl+n to describe what you are doing.

In our Chrome Browser lesson we taught you the commands:

ctrl+n - open a new Chrome window
ctrl+t - open a new Chrome tab
ctrl+w - close an open Chrome Window or tab
ctrl+d - this will bookmark a page

There are in fact a large number of keyboard shortcuts. Depending on what you do most often with your Chromebook some may be more or less useful to you.

Here we will highlight a few that we use frequently and will come in handy for you during your data science career. To understand these key combinations first it is useful to know what some of the symbols on your Chromebook keyboard represent.

The arrows in the top left hand corner take you back to the previous webpage you visited in a Chrome Tab and forward to the next page you visited. We will call them the forward and back keys.

The back and forward keys are the arrows in the upper left of the keyboard.

The curly key next to that refreshes the page you are currently visiting. Sometimes if you make an update to a webpage you are building and want to see the update you will need to refresh the page. We will call this the refresh key.

The refresh key is the curly key in the upper left of the keyboard.

The full screen key will take a tab you are working on and make that tab fill the whole screen. This will hide your shelf and hide the bookmarks and search bar at the top of your screen. When working on coding or when you feel you don’t have enough screen space this button can be helpful. You can shrink the browser window back to the normal size by pressing the full screen button again. We will call this the fullscreen key.

The full screen key is the key with the window with two arrows in the upper middle of the keyboard.

The button next to that is the show all windows button. This button will show you all the windows you have open, including Chrome Windows and any Android Apps you might have open. We will call this button the showwindows button.

The show windows key is the key with the window and two lines next to it in the upper middle of the keyboard.

The screen lock key in the upper right hand corner will lock your Chromebook when you aren’t using it and if you set up your settings to require a password, then you will need to re-enter your password to re-open your Chromebook. When working on data science projects where the data is sensitive it is a good idea to lock your Chromebook whenever you aren’t using it. We will call this the lock key.

The lock key is the key with the lock in the upper right of the keyboard.

You will recall that the Launcher key is the key with the magnifying glass on the left hand side of the keyboard. We will call this the launcher key.

The launcher key is the magnifying glass on the right of the keyboard.

4.5.1 Taking Screenshots on a Chromebook

Using these keys we can now consider some of the more useful keyboard shortcuts on your Chromebook. This will definitely be a partial list, you can learn about the rest of the shortcuts from the Chromebook help documentation.

Taking screenshots on your Chromebook is very useful. You will use this when you are troubleshooting problems in the course frequently. There are two ways to take a screenshot. The first is to use the command ctrl+showwindows. If you use this key combination you will take a picture of everything that appears on the screen. This first will appear as a pop-up box in the lower right hand corner.

The screenshot appears as a dialog in the lower right.

You can also open the Files App and see that the screenshot has been stored on your computer. All screenshots you take will automatically stored in Files on your computer.

The screenshot appears is stored in the Files App.

If you click twice quickly on the screenshot file it will open and you can see it looks exactly like what was on your screen when you took the screenshot.

The screenshot is a picture of whatever was on your screen.

Sometimes, rather than taking a picture of the whole screen you will want to take a picture of just a small part of the screen. There is a second screenshot command that lets you do this. If you press ctrl+shift+showwindows then your screen will turn a shade darker and you will see your cursor is replaced with a bullseye icon. If you click and then drag, you can select only part of your screen to take a screenshot of. For example you could take a screenshot of just the upper right hand corner of the Files App.

A targeted screenshot is also stored as a png in the Files App.

This screenshot also will pop up in the lower right hand corner of your screen and then appear in your Files App.

A targeted screenshot only takes a picture of part of the screen.

4.5.2 Zooming in and out

Another set of useful shortcuts is to zoom your screen in and zoom your screen out. To zoom in, you can hold down ctrl and press the key that has the plus and equals on it (near the top right hand side of the keyboard). To zoom out, you can hold the ctrl key and press the key with the minus and underscore key on it (near the top right hand side of the keyboard). This will allow you to make the text on websites bigger and smaller to ease reading. For example on the website https://posit.cloud/ if you press ctrl+plus/equals four times you will zoom in 175%.

If you use the zoom shortcut the text on a webpage increases in size.

4.5.3 Finding a word on a page

Sometimes you will need to search a webpage for a specific word or phrase. To do this you can press ctrl+f and a box will pop up. You can then search for the specific word, for example we could search for the word “teach” on https://posit.cloud/.

You can find a word or phrase on a page using the find shortcut.

4.5.4 Text formatting shortcuts

Many of the text formatting shortcuts are nearly the same as on other types of computers. We will review them briefly here as they will be very useful when editing documents, presentations, and code. If you have used computers before you may already know these.

ctrl+c - copies selected text
ctrl+v - pastes the selected text
ctrl+x - cuts the selected text and copies it so you can paste it elsewhere
ctrl+z - undoes the previous action you did when editing a file

One thing that is somewhat unusual about a Chromebook is that there is not a caps lock key. If you want to turn on caps lock you will need to use the command alt+launcher. To turn caps lock back off again you can simply click on the shift key.

4.6 Chromebook Security

In some ways a Chromebook provides some security for you. Chrome OS has a number of security features that are constantly being improved by Google. We will discuss updating your Chromebook in a later section, but the updates ensure that at a basic level your Chromebook will have good security features. For example, data will be encrypted when passing through a web browser and each browser window will be sandboxed so a web app open in one browser window can’t access data from another window.

But there are still some steps that you can take to make sure that your Chromebook is secure. This will be particularly important if your Chromebook is lost or stolen, but will also be useful if you share your computer with family or friends. Since a data scientist is often working with data that may be private or sensitive, it is important that if they lose their computer, they don’t risk losing the data they are working on. Setting your Chromebook up to be secure from the start is an important step for any data scientist.

4.6.1 Setting your Chromebook password

One of the most important parts of securing your Chromebook is making sure that you have a good password. Good passwords are long, easy for you to remember, but hard for other people to guess. Don’t use simple passwords like “12345” or “password”, don’t use your name, your date of birth, or other details that would be easy to guess if someone saw your Facebook profile.

Good passwords have a few important characteristics:

They are long, ideally more than 10 characters
They are easy for you to remember.
They are not a commonly used password.

One way to create relatively good passwords is to string together four or five random words. This approach was made popular by an xkcd cartoon. For example a password made with this approach would be “bikerainsmellblue”. This password has more than 10 characters, is easy for you to remember, and is unlikely to be used by a lot of other people. Try to pick words that aren’t related to each other. Then you only have to remember the four words to remember your password.

xkcd suggested a good password combines four random words.

Another way to create a password is to choose a line from a book or movie and choose the first one to three letters of each word. For example, you might use the line “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,” then you could change that to “onupamiddrwhipoweanwe”. You can then just remember the line that you have chosen and the fact that you used a certain number of letters from each word. Again, its a good idea to pick a line from a poem or a book that is less famous to do this.

You can improve either of those password schemes by capitalizing some letters or turning words like “too” into numbers to make them more unique. The key is just to have a password that is not very common, easy to remember, and would be hard for other people to guess.

4.6.2 Requiring password to wake from sleep

Now that you have set a good password you can make your Chromebook more secure by making sure that anyone will have to use the password to log in. To do this you need to again open up your personal settings by clicking on your personal avatar in the bottom of your screen and then click on the gear to open your personal settings.

Open your personal settings

Once you have your personal settings open you can click on the “Screen Lock” settings.

Open the Screen Lock settings.

You’ll be required to input your (hopefully good!) password.

Input your password.

Then you can turn on screen lock by clicking the option in the upper right hand corner of the screen for “Show screen lock when waking from sleep”.

Click on option to Show screen lock when waking from sleep.

Now if you close your Chromebook, put it to sleep, or log out, you will have to input your password to get access to your account. This will prevent other users from getting access to your Chromebook account even if they get a hold of the physical device.

4.6.3 Managing other people

Another thing that you can do to make your Chromebook more secure is decide in advance who can log into your Chromebook. To do this, open your personal settings by clicking on the personal avatar at the bottom right hand side of your screen, then click the gear to open your personal settings. The click on the option to “Manage Other People”.

Click on Manage Other People to manage users of your Chromebook.

If you are the owner of the Chromebook you can then click on the dot next to “Restrict sign-in to the following users”. If you are the owner of the Chromebook will then be able to input which users can and can’t log on to your computer.

Click on the option to restrict users.

4.6.4 Two step verification

If you are dealing with very sensitive data or want to be more secure about who can access your account, you can turn on two step verification. All this means is that you can set it up so that entering your password is not enough to unlock your computer. You will also need to get a text message to your phone with a special code each time that you log in. This means that even if someone gets ahold of your Chromebook, they would also have to have your phone to be able to log into your account. Two step verification is often required for data scientists working in industry and is a good idea to prevent loss of your account information.

To turn on two step verification first go to the website https://www.google.com/landing/2step and click on “Get Started” in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Go to the two step verification page and click Get Started.

This will take you through the two step verification set up process. First you will again need to click “Get Started”.

Click Get Started.

Then you will be required to enter your password to confirm that it really is you trying to step two step verification.

Enter your password.

You will be asked to input your phone number. This is the phone number that will receive the text message every time you input your password and try to log in. This should be for your personal phone that you will have with you when you want to log in to your Chromebook. You won’t be able to log in without your phone after you set this up.

Enter the phone number of the phone you will use for two step verification.

Once you input your phone number, you will get a text message with a 6 digit number. Take this code and type it in to the next screen to confirm that you have the right phone number set up for two step verification.

Enter your verification code to confirm your phone.

After confirming both your password and your phone number you will be given the option to turn on two factor verification. You can do this by clicking “Turn On” on the next window.

Turn on two factor authentication.

Once this is turned on you can turn it back off by going through the same steps as before and then clicking “Turn Off” on the next screen.

You can turn off two factor verification by clicking Turn Off.

Finally, once you have enabled two step verification, you will need to have your phone with you every time you log in to your computer. This is good for security purposes, but will cause problems if you lose or replace your phone. Make sure you turn this feature back off if you are planning on getting a new phone.

4.6.5 Managing apps and devices

You can monitor and manage which apps and devices have access to your account information from your account security page at https://myaccount.google.com/security . You should check this information periodically (every month or so at least) to see if there are any events or activity that you don’t recognize. If anyone has gotten access to your password or log in information, you will be able to see here when they have logged into your account.

Your account security page.

First you can see any security events that have occurred. Security events can be found by looking under “Device activity & security events” in the section “Recent Security Events”. This will give you information on when your passwords are changed or when you have turned on or off two step verification.

Your security events tell you about when your password or two step verification settings have changed.

You can also see all the devices that have logged in to your Google account under “Device activity & security events” in the section “Recently used devices”. You will see the Chromebook you are currently working on, but you will also see any Android phones you have logged in to or other computers where you signed into your account.

Your recently used devices tells you what devices have logged into your account.

As we have discussed in other sections, all of the software running on your Chromebook will be either Chrome Apps or Extensions or Android apps. For a lot of this software you will use Google to log in. That way you don’t have to have a separate password for each app and website. But each time you do this, you give the app a little bit of your information. When you stop using an app you may no longer want them to have access to your information. You can look and see which apps have access to your Google information by looking under “Apps with Account Access” in the section “Apps with Access to your Account”.

You can see which apps have access to your account.

If you click on a particular app you can take away the permission of that app to use your Google information. It is a good idea to check these apps from time to time and remove those that you no longer need, so they don’t have access to your Google information anymore.

You can remove access for specific apps by clicking on them.

4.7 Updating your Chromebook

In computing, there are often updates that are available. Updates can fix bugs, add new features, and/or improve security on your chromebook. Over time, your apps will need to be updated as well as your Chromebook’s operating system (OS) itself. To update your Chromebook you need internet connection.

Every time you power on your Chromebook, it will check for and apply available updates. In fact, some updates to the Chrome OS happen in the background automatically while you’re using your device with the updates going into effect the next time you restart. However, should you ever need or want to manually update your Chromebook, you can do so using the following steps:

4.7.1 Steps to Update

Step 1. Click on your username or photo at the bottom right-hand of the screen.

Home Screen

Step 2. A menu will display. On this menu, click on the settings button, which is the icon that looks like a gear turning.

Settings Icon

Step 3. A new window will appear. Here, you will click settings in the top left-hand portion of the screen.

Settings Screen

Step 4. On the menu that appears, click on ‘About Chrome OS’.

About Chrome OS

Step 5. From the ‘About Chrome OS’ window that is now displayed, click on ‘CHECK FOR UPDATES.’

CHECK FOR UPDATES

Step 6. The progress of your update will be displayed in that window. Once the update has finished, a message will display letting you know that you are “Nearly up to date!”

Nearly up to date! RESTART your device to finish updating

To complete the update, you will have to restart your Chromebook. To do so, click ‘RESTART’ at the right of the window.

RESTART to finish updating

At this point, your screen will go black for a few seconds. Your Chromebook will then restart and you’ll be brought back to the login screen. Login back in here using your Google username and password.

4.8 Getting Help with a Chromebook

Chromebooks have the advantage of being very simple. You are going to do almost everything through the Internet browser. This minimizes many issues that laptop computers had historically. However, there are still issues that you will run into from time to time. We’ll discuss them below and describe where you can find help for these problems.

4.8.1 Common Issues

Common Chromebook Issues generally fall under one of the following categories:

Operating Systems Issues
Internet Connection Problems
Google Account Login

All of these issues are addressed among Google’s Chromebook help pages.

Chromebook Support Page

Below we’ll demonstrate how to step through finding answers among this documentation; however, a few good things to consider before going to the help documentation are:

Did I type that web address correctly? Am I getting this error because of a mistake I made? If it is, fix that mistake and move on!
Have I restarted recently (within the past week or two)? If not, now may be a good time to consider restarting to see if the issue still exists.

If restarting doesn’t work or you can’t find a mistake, it may be time to consult the Chromebook Support documentation. We’ll walk through how to do that below.

4.8.2 Chromebook Support

In addition to addressing common issues above, Google has a place where Chromebook users can go for support. At https://support.google.com/chromebook, you can search for answers to questions others have already asked or ask new questions. For example, if you were struggling to connect to the Internet on your Chromebook, you could first click on ‘Connect your Chromebook’ among the list of help topics.

Connect your Chromebook

This will expand the list to expose a number of topics of interest. If you were struggling to connect your Chromebook using Wi-Fi, you would click on ‘Connect your Chromebook to Wi-Fi’

Connect your Chromebook to Wi-Fi

This would open a new web page with step-by-step instructions to help get you connected to wifi.

Wi-Fi Connection Help Page

If you don’t see what you’re looking for immediately among these topics, you can use the search bar at top.

Search Bar

By typing in the issue you are having in the search bar at the top, you can be directed to questions others have previously asked. For example, if you want to learn how to add an extension, you could type ’add extension in the search bar. As with most Google search bars, Google will try to provide helpful suggestions of topics you may be interested in. You can click on this if it matches what you’re interested in

Add Extension Search Bar

As before, a page with helpful steps to help solve your problem will show up.

Adding Extensions

Finally, if your topic isn’t here or doesn’t pop up, you can search additional questions asked in the ‘Help Forum.’ To access the help forum, click on ‘HELP FORUM’ at the top right hand of the page.

Help Forum Button

This will bring you to the Chromebook Central Help Forum.

Chromebook Central Help Forum

Always begin by searching for your topic to see if it has already been asked and answered using the search bar at the top. However, if you have a new question, you are welcome to start a new topic using the button at the top right.

NEW TOPIC

Clicking on the red ‘NEW TOPIC’ button will bring you to a new window where you can write out your specific question. Once you have asked your question as clearly and with as few words as possible, click ‘POST’ at the bottom right-hand of the screen so that others will be able to help you out by answering your question.

New Topic Empty Box

You’re now all up-to-date!