How to play Android touch games on your Chromebook using the keyboard

ChromeOS 105 estrena control teclado y raton juegos tactiles android

Despite the fact that Google announced in 2020 that ChromeOS would officially be compatible with Steam, it was not until the beginning of the year that Steam alpha arrived on Chromebooks. However, during that launch, Google took the opportunity to detail something else: they were developing a functionality that would allow you to play touch-only Android games with the keyboard and mouse of your Chromebook .

From that moment we did not know anything new about it, until now that ChromeOS 105 arrived. Finally, Google decided to launch the alpha test of its new game control system. Yes, you can now play various Android touch titles on your Chromebook with mouse and keyboard thanks to virtual mapping.

The new ChromeOS game control system allows you to simulate screen touches with the keyboard

New game controls introduced in ChromeOS 105 allow keystrokes to be translated as taps and other touch actions on the screen. It’s a feature that’s still pretty green, but it expands the compatibility of games developed for Android and touch environments on your Chromebook.

Currently, the new game controls require your ChromeOS computer to be connected to a keyboard and input pointer (such as a mouse or trackpad). When you start any of the supported games, you will automatically see a notification window telling you that you can use certain keys to simulate touch and touch gestures. This will allow you to control the characters and perform different actions within the game, being able to (also) customize the keyboard mapping as you wish.

You can do the latter from the square floating button that you will now see on the screen while you play, the same place from which you can enable or disable virtual key mapping . However, keyboard usage currently works only when you are actively playing a match within supported games. To navigate in the menus or advance in the dialogs you will have to use the mouse or touch panel.

According to Google, this functionality is necessary because: ” Most ChromeOS users interact with apps using a mouse and keyboard , but many apps on Google Play are only designed for touch interactions.” The latter is a real problem when it comes to integrating Android apps with ChromeOS. However, Google intends to solve this in the future by requiring Android game developers to include mouse and keyboard support.

Which Android touch games are compatible with the new ChromeOS virtual mapping? What is Google’s next step?

control juegos teclado y raton ChromeOS para juegos tactiles Android

Although Google hopes to expand the list soon, at the moment only 30 touch titles are compatible with the alpha version of the new ChromeOS game control system. They are divided as follows:

As we discussed above, this new feature is still pretty green (it’s barely an alpha), but Google has big plans for it. In fact, his strategy points towards the following:

  • Develop an editor that allows you to easily add mouse and keyboard support to any touch game on Google Play running on a Chromebook.
  • Add full mouse support within the active game as well as controllers.
  • New types of simulated touch interactions .