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Network administration is one of those boring realities of using so many connected devices, and while there are plenty of tools that can help streamline things, it sometimes feels like Chromebooks do it all. their best to make the task more difficult. Right now, it’s even difficult to identify your Chromebook on your local network because Chrome OS doesn’t broadcast your device’s hostname, a unique tag that helps it stand out. As a result, diagnosing even simple wireless issues is more painful than it should be, forcing you to deal with cumbersome IP addresses. Fortunately, you won’t have to wait any longer before you can give your Chromebook a convenient and easy-to-recognize hostname.
In October, Chrome Story discovered a work in progress that would allow a user to change their Chromebook’s hostname directly from System Preferences – no admin console needed. This opens the door for so many potential wacky and creative names to help you identify your device on the network. Despite the accumulation of nearly 300 stars on the bug tracker, the development of the feature has remained silent, hopes of renaming our Chromebooks for almost a year have fizzled.
Recently, we brought up several commits on Chromium Gerrit that prove that Google hasn’t given up on the feature, and in a recent update to the Canary Channel, its indicator became available for retesting. Intrepid users can see the user interface by copying and pasting the following URL into bold in the address bar of Chrome:
Allows you to set the Chrome OS hostname, the name of the device that is exposed to the local network – Chrome OS
Toggle its drop-down list from Default to On, then restart your Chromebook. Once your desktop returns, click “About Chrome OS” in System Preferences, then select “More Details.”
You will soon be able to customize the name of your device through System Preferences.
You will find a new entry “Device name” towards the bottom of the page with the option to customize it. On my particular unit, my Chromebook’s default name is ChromeOS_959745 (the arbitrary numbering isn’t here to stay, thankfully), but we can change that to something more creative. When you click on the pencil icon, you will be able to enter up to fifteen characters (letters, numbers and hyphens included). The new name will become visible to other devices on your network and via Bluetooth connections.
The name change feature isn’t working at this time, so it will take a while before you can customize the name of your Chromebook. Troubleshooting wireless issues on my Chromebook has proven to be a tough ordeal at times thanks to a bunch of wireless devices in my house, and it’s hard to remember my laptop’s IP address. With a unique name, I can easily find my device on the network, without having to go to my Chromebook’s network settings or mess around with crosh.
Since we’re still waiting for the official arrival of this feature, you have a little bit of time to come up with a good name for your own Chromebook. Personally, I name my Pixel Slate “Ayam-Cemani” – so no carbon copy.
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