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Configuring Personal Stuff
More personalization options can be found on the Personal Stuff tab of Chrome’s Settings page. As you might suspect, this “personal stuff” includes things like your account picture, the way Chrome handles passwords, and the like.
Changing Your Account Password
As covered in Chapter 4, “Managing Multiple Users,” you can easily change the picture that displays for your account on the Chrome login screen. You do this from the Account section of the Personal Stuff tab; return to Chapter 4 for more details.
Waking from Sleep
If you want to keep strangers from accessing your Chromebook, you can require the entry of your user password whenever Chrome wakes from sleep mode. This is a nice bit of added security that ensures that nobody but you can access your running Chromebook and Google Account.
Click the Customize and Control (wrench) button and select Settings.
When the Settings page appears, select the Personal Stuff tab.
- Check the Require Password to Wake from Sleep box.
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Syncing Your Account
Chrome OS and the Chrome browser are part of Google’s Web-based, cloud computing architecture. As such, if you use the Chrome browser on multiple computers (even Windows or Mac machines), you can configure Chrome to use the same bookmarks and settings on those other PCs.
This synchronization is possible because Google saves all your bookmarks and settings online in your Google Account. Whenever or wherever you launch Chrome and connect to your Google Account, the settings you see will be the same ones you saved previously. Any changes you make from any computer are also saved online, and those changes are visible from other computers you use to access the Internet. So after you get your Chromebook properly configured, the Chrome browser will look and feel the same on any other computer you use.
This synchronization is enabled by default on your Chromebook. You can, however, configure just what settings you want to sync across all your computers.
Click the Customize and Control (wrench) button and select Settings.
When the Settings page appears, select the Personal Stuff tab.
- Go to the Sync section and click the Customize button.
When the Customize Sync Preferences dialog box appears, pull down the Sync Everything button and select either Sync Everything (default) or Choose What to Sync.
- If you opted to choose what to sync, check any or all of the following items to synchronize: Apps, Autofill, Bookmarks, Extensions, Passwords, Preferences, or Themes.
- By default, Google encrypts your passwords using your Google Account password. If you’d rather use a different password, select the Choose My Own Passphrase option, then enter and confirm the new password.
- Click the OK button when done.
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Saving Passwords
By default, Chrome will offer to save any passwords you enter when visiting web pages. This makes revisiting these pages that much faster and easier; Google enters the passwords for you, rather than you having to manually enter them yourself.
You can opt, however, for Google not to offer to save these passwords. This means you’ll always have to enter required passwords manually—which makes for better security.
Click the Customize and Control (wrench) button and select Settings.
When the Settings page appears, select the Personal Stuff tab.
- Go to the Passwords section and select the Never Save Passwords option.
- To delete any saved passwords, click the Manage Saved Passwords button.
- When the Passwords page appears, sites where you’ve saved passwords appear at the top of the page; sites where you’ve opted not to save passwords appear at the bottom. Hover over a site in the Saved Passwords section and click the X to delete that password from the list.
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Enabling Autofill
If you do a lot of online shopping, you probably find yourself re-entering the same personal information on multiple sites. You can simplify all this form entering by enabling Chrome’s Autofill feature, which stores your basic information and enters it automatically whenever you encounter a similar form on a web page.
Click the Customize and Control (wrench) button and select Settings.
When the Settings page appears, select the Personal Stuff tab.
- Check the Enable Autofill to Fill Out Web Forms in a Single Click box.
- To view and manage your Autofill settings, click the Manage Autofill Settings button.
- When the Autofill Settings page appears, you see saved Addresses and Credit Cards. To delete an item, hover over it and click the X button. To add a new item, click either the Add New Street Address or Add New Credit Card button.
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