Limitless Control: Join the ChromeOS Device Enrollment Limits TT
We are excited to announce an opportunity to join a new Trusted Tester program for a feature coming to ChromeOS that will help administrators manage device licensing more effectively: Device Enrollment Limits. Further to our discussion post on this recently launched trusted tester, we also wanted to share some more information on this feature and how it works. What is the "Device Enrollment Limits" feature and what problem does it solve? It's a new functionality in the Google Admin Console that allows administrators to set specific enrollment limits for each Organizational Unit (OU). It's designed to give administrators greater control over ChromeOS license consumption across their organization, ensuring fair access, optimizing license allocation, and preventing overconsumption. Where can administrators find and manage the "Device Enrollment Limits" feature in the Google Admin Console? You'll find it by navigating to Devices > Chrome > Reports. The feature is nested under Device enrollment limits on that page. How do administrators set an enrollment limit for a specific Organizational Unit (OU)? The basic steps are: Navigate to Devices > Chrome > Reports > Device enrollment limits. Click the specific OU you want to configure. In the dialog, turn on the toggle for the desired license type (Chrome Enterprise/Education Upgrade or Kiosk & Signage Upgrade). Enter a numerical value for the available enrollment slots in the "Device enrollments remaining" field. Click "Save". (Setting the limit to 0 prevents that OU from enrolling devices.) What types of licenses can be managed with this feature, and are there any exceptions? You can set limits for perpetual and annual Chrome Enterprise/Education Upgrade (CEU) and Kiosk & Signage Upgrade (KSU) licenses. Yes, bundled or packaged licenses cannot be adjusted using this feature. When an OU has both perpetual and termed licenses, perpetual licenses will be utilized first before tapping into termed ones. How can I quickly see which OUs have reached their limit? On the "Device enrollment limits" page, use the "Add a filter" button and select "Device enrollment limits reached". You can also choose filters to show only OUs with "0 remaining device enrollments for CEU" or "0 remaining device enrollments for KSU". What happens when an OU reaches its set limit? New devices will be unable to enroll in that specific OU. The Admin Console will show "0" remaining slots, and users attempting enrollment on the Chromebook will encounter an error. This prevents overconsumption Will the "Device Enrollment Limits" be manageable through the Chrome Policy API? No, management and configuration of these limits will be exclusively through the Google Admin Console user interface. What are the minimum requirements to participate in this pre-General Availability (GA) pilot program? To be a trusted tester, your organization must: Have a managed domain Have devices and licenses that are managed by the Google Admin Console. Ideal candidates are those who are also expected to provide good and consistent feedback within a short timeframe. How to Apply If you are an administrator and would like to be included in this Trusted Tester program to try out Device Enrollment Limits and provide valuable feedback, please simply post a comment below to express your interest! We will reach out to you directly with the next steps.Join the ChromeOS Device Enrollment Limits TT
We are excited to announce an opportunity to join a new Trusted Tester program for a feature coming to ChromeOS that will help administrators manage device licensing more effectively: Device Enrollment Limits. What is the Feature? Currently, there is no easy way to prevent one team or organizational unit (OU) from consuming too many device licenses, which can leave other parts of your organization short. The ChromeOS TT for Device Enrollment Limits is designed to give you, as an administrator, more control over license consumption within your OUs. This pre-General Availability (GA) pilot will allow you to: Set specific enrollment limits per OU. Ensure fair access to licenses across your organization. Optimize resource allocation and prevent overconsumption. Once you request to be part of the TT (more details below) and we set you up for it, you'll find and manage this feature in the Google Admin Console under Devices > Chrome > Reports. For more information, head on over to our Product Hub for a Q&A blog post on this Trusted Tester. How to Apply If you are an administrator and would like to be included in this Trusted Tester program to try out Device Enrollment Limits and provide valuable feedback, please simply post a comment below to express your interest! We will reach out to you directly with the next steps.ChromeOS Device Enrollment Essentials
This guide summarizes the mandatory steps to enroll devices, allowing your organization to enforce all device and user policies set in the Google Admin Console. 1. Prerequisites: Don't skip these Before enrollment, ensure you have: Administrator access: You must use an administrator account with the necessary privileges. Valid license/Upgrade: Enrollment consumes a valid Chrome Enterprise Upgrade, a bundled Chromebook Enterprise device, or Kiosk & Signage Upgrade license. Terms of Service (TOS) Acceptance: You must accept the TOS in the Admin Console (Devices > Chrome > Devices). Note: You must enroll the device before any end-user signs in. If a user signs in first, you must wipe the device and restart the process. 2. Enrollment methods [See video] A. Manual enrollment (The Ctrl+Alt+E Method) Use this for individual device setup or if zero-touch isn't configured. Stop at the sign-in screen: Power on the device but do not sign in. Initiate enrollment: Press the Ctrl + Alt + E shortcut (or select "Enterprise enrollment"). Sign in: Use an eligible admin or user account. Choose license: Select the correct license type (Enterprise or Kiosk & Signage) to ensure the right features are applied. B. Automatic enrollment This method significantly speeds up large-scale deployments: Zero-Touch Enrollment: For new ChromeOS devices purchased through an authorized reseller, the devices automatically enroll upon connecting to the internet. Flex Remote Deployment: The ChromeOS Flex Remote Deployment (FRD) is a solution that enables IT administrators to perform a zero-touch remote installation of ChromeOS Flex onto large fleets of compatible devices running Windows, followed by automatic enrollment. 3. Key admin controls & Best practices These policies, managed in the Admin Console, give you granular control over the process: Enrollment permissions: Control who can enroll a device. It's a good idea to restrict this to IT staff, or only allow re-enrollment of wiped devices to prevent unauthorized new devices from being added to your domain. Asset tracking: Set the Asset identifier during enrollment policy to allow the technician or user to enter the Asset ID and Location during setup. This is critical for accurate inventory management. Enforced enrollment: Use the Initial sign-in (Enrollment controls) policy to Require users to enroll device. This blocks a user from signing in to a non-enrolled device if they are eligible to enroll it, enforcing compliance. 4. Real-world deployment examples Manual setup (New staff): An IT technician uses Ctrl + Alt + E and enters the Asset ID and Location before confirming the enrollment, ensuring the device is correctly tagged and placed in the appropriate Organizational Unit (OU) from day one. Mass deployment (New office): Devices purchased with Zero-Touch automatically enroll upon network connection. Policies are instantly enforced, and the device is ready for the first sign-in without any manual IT intervention. Kiosk/Signage: When setting up a lobby display, the admin selects Enroll kiosk or signage device during the manual enrollment steps. This locks the device down for Kiosk Mode, preventing general user sign-ins as required by the license type. For more information check out the article in the Help Center: Enroll ChromeOS Devices And continue on through our Getting Started User Guides to the left.Your guide to smarter ChromeOS administration
The pace of innovation in Chrome Enterprise and ChromeOS continues to accelerate. Earlier this year, we launched a wave of powerful AI-driven features designed to fundamentally change how you manage your fleet and support your end-users. We’ve summarized the key developments below, focusing on the practical, day-to-day applications for your administrative work. Part 1: Empowering IT: AI in the Admin Console Updates focus heavily on simplifying the most time-consuming aspects of device management using Google AI and Gemini. New Feature Practical Day-to-Day Application 1. Chrome Admin Assistance (Gemini Chatbot) Instant, conversational support and task execution. Instead of navigating complex menus, you can simply ask the chatbot in natural language to perform an action. For example, "What is the status of device serial number X?" or "Initiate a remote reboot for device Y." This significantly cuts down on routine, manual administrative tasks. SIgn up as a trusted tester to avail. 2. Natural Language Processing (NLP) Search Find policies and devices instantly without precise keywords. No more guessing policy names or remembering exact search syntax. You can now use plain English for complex queries like: "Show me all devices enrolled last month" or "Find the policy for blocking USB storage." This makes fleet audits and configuration checks much faster. 3. Intelligent Recommendations (Related Settings) Ensure comprehensive and optimized configurations. When you’re viewing the details of one policy (e.g., microphone control settings), the Admin Console now surfaces other logically related policies (like audio output settings). This prevents overlooked settings and ensures a more complete and secure setup. Part 2: Powering end-users (and reducing your tickets) While your focus is on the fleet, these end-user-facing AI enhancements are vital because they impact user productivity and, ultimately, your support load. Gemini integration in Google Workspace: If your organisation does have Workspace, users now have powerful AI assistants in Gmail (summarizing threads, composing faster), Docs, Sheets, and Slides. As an Admin, you can easily pin Gemini to the Chromebook shelf, ensuring simple, centralized access for all employees. AI built into ChromeOS: Users gain productivity tools that work across any application, not just Google's. Features like Help me read and Help me write assist with comprehension and content creation in third-party or web applications. Furthermore, AI-enhanced video call controls and Live Translate directly on the device improve meeting quality and cross-lingual collaboration, leading to less friction and fewer support requests for connectivity/tool issues. Part 3: The Right Hardware To unlock these most advanced AI experiences, organizations should look to Chromebook Plus devices, which meet a higher standard for performance and memory. When planning your next refresh cycle, ensure the hardware can support the full stack of new AI capabilities to maximize user benefit. Ready for the Deep Dive? Be sure to read the full post: The IT Admin's Guide to Google AI.
Best practices for deploying WireGuard VPN across managed ChromeOS devices (system-wide or via Admin Console)
Hello, We currently manage a growing fleet of ChromeOS devices (Chromebooks and Chromeboxes) through our Google Workspace domain. All devices are enrolled, updated to the latest ChromeOS version, and centrally configured via the Admin Console. Our VPN of choice is WireGuard, which ChromeOS now supports natively. We followed Google’s official documentation to configure WireGuard per user: Configure VPNs on ChromeOS (Google Support) The challenge we are running into is scalability: configuring WireGuard individually on a per-user basis is becoming increasingly tedious as our organization grows. Ideally, we would like to achieve one of the following: - System-wide tunnel setup - Assign a WireGuard key per device, rather than per user. This would allow the VPN configuration to apply regardless of who logs into the machine. - Admin Console integration - Ability to push or preconfigure WireGuard VPN settings (similar to how Wi-Fi networks or other VPN types can be managed centrally). From what I understand, the Admin Console allows pushing some network settings, but WireGuard does not currently appear as a supported option. We also explored the possibility of using an Android VPN app as a workaround. However, the Android subsystem seems to create its own isolated IP pool, which breaks certain use cases for us — e.g., we need internal VPN IP addresses for DNS resolution and internal resource access, which doesn’t work properly when tunneled through the Android environment. So my questions are: Is there currently any way to enforce or distribute WireGuard VPN configurations via the Admin Console? If not, is there a recommended workaround to achieve system-wide VPN coverage (device-level rather than user-level)? More generally, what is the best practice for deploying WireGuard in centrally-managed ChromeOS environments today? I realize WireGuard support on ChromeOS is still relatively new and limited to certain devices, but we’ve been using it successfully with most of our devices. We’re just looking for the most scalable and officially supported way to roll this out across our managed devices. Thanks in advance for any insights!New user guides: ChromeOS policies
Hey everyone, Just wanted to let you know we've published two new articles in the User Guide section of the community, designed to help you master ChromeOS policies! These new guides dive deep into the specific steps for applying policies across your fleet: Setting ChromeOS device policies: Learn how to configure policies that apply to your managed ChromeOS devices, regardless of who is signed in. Setting ChromeOS user and browser policies: Get the details on configuring policies that apply to specific users when they sign in, as well as policies for the Chrome browser across different operating systems. All comments and feedback are welcome! Please let us know if these guides help streamline your policy setup. What other ChromeOS topics would you like to see covered in our next user guides?Chrome OS Flex AUE in Google Admin
Hey. The admin console has a fantastic feature where you can see the AUE of your devices pr year. It makes it easier to plan budget for replacing devices going out of support and planning execution. https://admin.google.com/ac/chrome/devices/?sf=2&so=2&tab=dashboard However - you can only see Chrome OS devices since the "Automatic updates until" field in Google Admin is not populated as in the example below. Obviously this information is available somewhere to be displayed, but it is currently not. I would really like to avoid exporting inventory to a spreadsheet, use the certified model list (https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11513094?hl=en) to populate the empty field in the spreadsheet and keep track of it there. How do others plan inventory replacements? Has anyone else tried to reach out to the Chrome OS team pointing out this flaw?Setting ChromeOS user or browser policies
To manage your fleet of ChromeOS devices, you must be a Google administrator. You can set user policies to control the user experience when the user signs in with their managed Google account on any device. Step 1: Access the Google Admin Console Sign in to the Google Admin console with your administrator account. Step 2: Navigate to User Settings From the Admin console Home page, go to Menu > Devices > Chrome > Settings > User & browser settings Step 3: Select an Organizational Unit On the left, select the organizational unit you want to apply the settings to. If you want to apply the settings to all devices, select the top-level organizational unit. Step 4: Configure the Policy Scroll to the setting you want to configure. Click on it, make your desired changes, and then click Save. The policies will take effect the next time a user signs in with their managed account on a ChromeOS device. Top 10 practical user policies for enterprise While there isn't an official list of the "top 10 most used" user policies, the following 10 are highly valuable for enterprise customers to manage security, user experience, and device performance. Maximum user session length: This policy is critical for security. You can set an automatic sign-out time (e.g., 60 minutes) to ensure that unattended devices are not left signed in, reducing the risk of unauthorized access. Browser sign-in settings: To prevent data leaks and maintain control over user accounts, you can enforce that users can only sign in to Chrome browser with their managed work account. This prevents them from using personal accounts on company devices. High efficiency mode: This policy improves device performance by automatically discarding inactive background tabs after a few hours. For a large enterprise, this can significantly reduce the memory footprint and CPU usage across the fleet, leading to better device responsiveness. Exceptions to tab discarding: You can set a list of mission-critical web pages (e.g., a CRM dashboard or an internal ticketing system) that will never be automatically discarded. This ensures that essential applications remain active in the background. Wake locks: This policy gives you control over whether applications and websites can prevent a device from sleeping or the screen from turning off. This is particularly useful for devices used as kiosks or for digital signage, ensuring the content is always visible. Idle settings: This policy allows you to define what a device does when it's left idle or a user closes the lid. You can configure devices to automatically lock, sign out, or even shut down, which is essential for both power management and security. Spoken feedback (ChromeVox): Enabling this accessibility feature is crucial for creating an inclusive workplace. It provides spoken feedback for visually impaired users, allowing them to navigate the device and use applications effectively. High contrast: For users with low vision, this policy can be configured to change the font and background color scheme to make web pages easier to read. This is a practical and important accessibility feature for a diverse workforce. Custom wallpaper: This policy allows you to set a company-branded wallpaper on all managed devices. This is useful for building a consistent corporate identity and can be used to display important information like IT support contact details. Custom terms of service: Before a user can sign in for the first time, you can present them with a custom terms of service document. This is useful for ensuring all employees acknowledge and agree to company policies, such as an acceptable use policy. For more detailed explanations of the device policies available, check out this article in our help center: Set Chrome policies for users or browsersSetting ChromeOS device policies
To manage your fleet of ChromeOS devices, you must be a Google Admin Console administrator. You can set policies for all devices in your organization or apply them to specific groups of devices using organizational units. Step 1: Access the Google Admin Console Sign in to the Google Admin console with your administrator account. Step 2: Navigate to Device Settings From the Admin console Home page, go to Menu > Devices > Chrome > Settings > Device settings. Step 3: Select an Organizational Unit On the left, select the organizational unit you want to apply the settings to. If you want to apply the settings to all devices, select the top-level organizational unit. Step 4: Configure the Policy Scroll to the setting you want to configure. Click on it, make your desired changes, and then click Save. Changes typically take effect within a few minutes, but it can sometimes take up to 24 hours. Top 10 practical ChromeOS device policies for enterprise While there isn't an official list of the "top 10 most used" devices policies, here are ten highly recommended and commonly used policies for enterprises, with a focus on security, productivity, and management. Forced Re-enrollment: This policy ensures that if a device is wiped, it automatically re-enrolls in your organization's account without a user's manual input. This is critical for device security and inventory management. Allow Guest Mode: Disabling guest mode prevents users from browsing the web without signing in, which can help ensure all user activity is tied to a specific account and is auditable. Sign-In Restriction: This policy allows you to restrict device sign-ins to only users within your organization's domain. For example, by allowlisting *@yourcompany.com, you prevent non-employees from using company devices. Device State Reporting: Enabling this policy allows administrators to collect and monitor real-time data on devices, such as serial number, model, and last time synced. This is crucial for fleet management and troubleshooting. Disabled Device Return Instructions: For lost or stolen devices, you can set a custom message that appears on the disabled device's screen. This message can include contact information, increasing the chances of the device being returned. Screen Lock: Automatically locking the screen on idle after a short period ensures that unattended devices are not left vulnerable. Safe Browsing: Enforcing Safe Browsing helps protect users from malicious sites by displaying a warning before they can access a potentially dangerous URL. Disallow External Storage Devices: This policy can prevent the use of USB drives and other external storage, which helps mitigate the risk of data exfiltration or malware introduction. Application Allowlisting: By setting the "Allowed Apps and Extensions" policy to "Block all apps and extensions except the ones I allow," you can maintain a high level of security and control over what applications users can run. This is a common and effective security measure. Automatic Updates: This policy ensures that the device's operating system and browser automatically receive and apply security patches and feature updates, keeping the devices secure and up to date without manual intervention. For more detailed explanations of the device policies available, check out this article in our help center: Set ChromeOS device policies
