Your smartphone becomes the key to your laptop with this tantalizing Chrome OS feature

Soon you might be able to log into a Chromebook just by bringing your Android phone close to it.

That would be a lot easier than typing in a password — as soon as your Chromebook detected that the phone was nearby, it would automatically unlock, using a feature helpfully named “Easy Unlock.” You might not even have to take your phone out of your pocket.

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Will this really come to a Chromebook near you? Who knows. There is a tantalizing suggestion in the latest developer version of Chrome OS, according to Android Police, which first reported the “feature.” It’s an option that developers can enable — but once enabled, it doesn’t actually do anything except show a tantalizing first screen.

If it materializes, it won’t be the first time someone has tried to use a phone to unlock a device. A startup called Toopher showed a similar product in 2012. More recently, HP introduced a technology to use NFC-enabled smartphones to unlock office laser printers — just tap your phone to the printer and you can use all the toner you want.

Hat tip: TechCrunch