Special Chromebook Tips and Troubleshooting

Chromebook Troubleshooting Guide

Here's a short document you can use as a guide to the most common things that go wrong on a Chromebook. Created by our student tech interns!

BASIC CHROMEBOOK DIFFERENCES

Hi students!

Your Chromebook is a little different than the desktops or other laptops you might have used.

Here are some quick tips for trouble you might be having.

If your Chromebook freezes, try to reset it by holding the power button down for about 3 seconds to turn off your ChromeBook.

Then turn it on again after about 10-15 seconds of waiting.

CAPS LOCK is different for a Chromebook than for other computers. 

There is a search button (a picture of a magnifying glass is on it) where the caps lock button is on other computers.

Press and hold this button at the same the as the "alt" button to turn on caps lock. 

Press the "shift" button to turn off caps lock.

Many keyboard shortcuts are the same as for Windows computers.

To cut, use ctrl-x.

To copy, use ctrl-c.

To paste, use ctrl-v.

See the picture below to learn about taking a screenshot.

Right Clicking on a PC is called "alt click" on a Chromebook.

Instead of right clicking by pressing the right button on a PC mouse, on a Chromebook you need to hold down alt and tap on your trackpad.

Learn how to have text read to you on your Chromebook. 

You'll need to change some settings on your Chromebook to have text read to you. Read the "Text to Speech on Chromebook" directions below.

How to make windows side-by-side on a Chromebook

Here's a trick that can help any Chromebook user: use the alt key plus the [ or ] key to push a window to the right or left side of the screen. Note: this shortcut only works on Chromebooks, not Windows.

• Here is a video to demonstrate it.