What you need to know
- A Chromium Gerritt finding sees Google eyeing stylus support for Chrome on Android.
- Many Android phones do not come with a stylus, so a feature like this may largely benefit tablets.
- Seeing as the feature is in its early days, it's difficult to tell which way Google will launch the feature on Chrome.
Early findings suggest Google could be working on bringing stylus support for Chrome on Android.
This comes from Chrome Story, who found the sign of stylus support on Chromium Gerritt. A description found within the Chromium Gerritt explains that "if enabled, on an appropriate platform, this feature will allow the user to input text using a stylus." If they're interested in this feature, users would have to enable it in settings.
The feature would work for Samsung's S-Pen-touting devices, which is a fairly limited scope. Notably, there is the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and the Motorola G Stylus 5G, both of which include built-in styluses, although the former is a more proprietary accessory that this feature appears to target above more standard stylus types. However, the feature would also work on Android devices with "handwriting enabled."
Google is apparently looking to bring support for this feature to Android T+ devices, meaning it would come to phones running Android 13 and above.
While this feature may not benefit many Android smartphones, there is a case to be made that this would benefit tablets more. One comment points to this as a focus for the flag, stating that enabling stylus support "is a key part of tablet support and a focus of Android T."
Tablets likely utilize their pen much more than phones now partly because of how much creativity one can sow from the larger displays. This included some of the best Android tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 series, which come equipped with the S Pen. Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold series also supports S-Pen input, so this feature would provide more use-cases for the accessory on the foldable devices.
