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Don’t throw away your Chromebook power cord just yet, although wireless charging is at least being considered for Chrome OS devices: The Chromium OS team has written code to manage inductive charging for Chromebooks.

Reddit user basmith7 spotted the code, which is publicly available to view. I examined the code and see various mentions of inductive charging, including how and when it would work with a hardware board code-named Ryu; it’s typical of new chips and boards to be integrated with the [company]Google[/company] Chrome OS software well in advance of actual products. Although details are scarce, I found mention of an [company]Nvidia[/company] Tegra chip in code supporting Ryu.

The current code monitors when the lid of a Chromebook is open or closed and would only recharge wirelessly when it is closed. That means you wouldn’t be able to work with your Chromebook on a wireless charging pad to keep the battery levels up; you’d have to close the laptop lid and let it sit to recharge. That makes sense since inductive charging can be slower than re-charging with a wire.

It depends on many factors, of course, but it’s more likely that a Chromebook would use more power than an wireless charger could return to the battery. Since this code was tested by the Chromium OS team as a “sanity check” — their words, not mine — this could be nothing more than a proof of concept for a hardware partner. Still, wireless charging of a Chromebook would be a nice convenience factor: Simply place it on a pad at the end of the day and walk away knowing you’ll have a full battery in the morning.