Google lets you control Chromebooks with your face

Controlling a laptop without lifting a finger sounds like a concept video, but Google is bringing it directly to the Chromebooks sitting on school desks.

Google announced a broader rollout of its face-tracking control feature for ChromeOS, designed primarily for people with motor impairments. First teased in early December, the system uses your webcam to track head movements and facial expressions, turning them into cursor navigation and clicks.

From gaming open-source to everyday laptops

This is not entirely new territory for Google. The tech traces back to Project Gameface, an open-source AI accessibility tool originally built for Windows gamers and later expanded to Android.

Google software engineer Amanda Lin Dietz, who helped develop the system, showed off how seamless the navigation can be. However, there is a catch: Google recommends at least 8GB of RAM to run it smoothly.

Alongside the software update, Google teased over 20 new Chromebook and Chromebook Plus devices arriving in 2025. That lineup includes the newly announced 14-inch Lenovo Chromebook Plus 2-in-1, though Google also appears to be padding its numbers by counting last October's Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus.

Class Tools and teacher surveillance

Google also rolled out Class Tools, a suite of real-time management features built directly for educators.

Once paired via a code, teachers can remotely view what students are doing on their screens in real time. Educators can push web content directly to laptops, turn on live captions or instant translations, or project a student's work to the whole class.

Google Classroom is also adding an integration with Figma’s FigJam. Teachers can assign collaborative whiteboards for group brainstorming, meaning educators can now see both the shared project and who is actually working on their screen.

Why it matters

Google continues to play to its absolute strengths: accessibility and the K-12 classroom.

Bringing head tracking out of niche gaming rigs and into everyday laptops makes high-end accessibility accessible to regular people without buying expensive specialized hardware. That said, the 8GB RAM recommendation means entry-level, budget-bin Chromebooks will likely get left behind.

On the education side, Class Tools tightens Google’s stranglehold on schools. Giving teachers granular screen control and live translation tools solves immediate classroom headaches. It looks like Google is making ChromeOS even harder for Apple and Microsoft to dislodge in schools, even if students might not love having their screens monitored in real time.