Consider this: If your Chromebook can be used in tablet mode, you flip that screen over and all of a sudden that physical keyboard isn’t exactly handy. What do you do? You use the virtual keyboard. However, the virtual keyboard isn’t enabled by default. So, before you can use it, you have to enable it. Let me show you how to not only enable the physical keyboard but also make it flat so it doesn’t take up as much screen space and you can move it to wherever you need. Also: 5 reasons a Chromebook is the perfect laptop for most users I’ll be demonstrating on ChromeOS 106.0.5239.0, but this should work on older instances of the operating system.
Enabling the virtual keyboard
1. Open Settings
The first thing to be done is to open the Settings app. Click the system tray (where the time lives) and click the gear icon to open the Settings app.
2. Locate Accessibility
In the left pane of the Settings app (Figure 1), click Advanced to expand the entry. With Advanced expanded, click Accessibility and then click “Manage accessibility features” (Figure 2).
3. Enable the Virtual Keyboard
Scroll down until you see “On-screen keyboard” (Figure 3). Click the on-off slider until it’s in the on position and then close out the Settings app.
Opening the Virtual Keyboard
With the Virtual Keyboard enabled, you should now see a keyboard icon on your shelf. Click that icon to open the virtual keyboard (Figure 4).
Enabling the floating keyboard
As you can see, the virtual keyboard takes up a lot of space, so much so that it could make using the Chrome web browser a bit challenging. What do you do? You can enable the floating keyboard, which is not only smaller but can also float on the screen to wherever you need it. To float the keyboard, click the right-pointing arrow in the top left corner and then click the small square near the center (Figure 5). Once the keyboard is floating (Figure 6), you can resize it by clicking and dragging one of the blue corner handles and dragging it around by clicking the bottom handle (circle with the four arrows). And that’s all there is to enabling and using the ChromeOS Virtual Keyboard. For those with a two-in-one Chromebook, this will be a great tool to use when the physical keyboard has been tucked out of the way.
