Fuchsia, Google’s mysterious new OS, has a nearly complete user interface

Google’s best-known software ventures may be Android and Chrome OS, but the company is actually working on a third operating system. It’s called Fuchsia, and when it was first discovered last year, it only popped up as a single command line. Now, the OS has a nearly complete user interface.

Fuchsia is a little different from Android and Chrome OS in that it’s not based on Linux. Instead, it’s based on a new Google-developed kernel called Magenta. According to Google, Magenta is aimed at “modern phones and modern personal computers,” so it wouldn’t be surprising to one day see Fuchsia appear on our smartphones.

Because Fuchsia is written using the Flutter SDK, which runs on Android, chunks of Fuchsia can be run on an Android device. This version of Fuchsia appears to be called Armadillo, and it completely reimagines the home screen. The screen, according to testing by Ars Technica, is basically presented as a big scrolling list, with a profile picture, the date, your city, and a battery icon all placed at the center. Above that, you’ll find “Story” cards, or a list of recent apps. Below, you’ll see a list of suggestions for you, which acts kind of like Google Now.

You can also drag recent apps around and drop them where you choose to organize and personalize the home screen. If you drop one app on top of another, you’ll enter a split-screen mode with up to three apps.

According to Hacker News, Travis Geiselbrech, who worked on NewOS, BeOS, Danger, Palm’s webOS, and iOS, and Brian Swetland, who also worked on BeOS and Android, are involved in this project.

There’s a lot of discussion going around about what exactly all of this could mean for the new operating system, and whether or not this is indeed meant for an Android and Chrome OS merger –or for something new. Google tells Digital Trends it has nothing to comment about at this time.

Chances are we won’t find out anything new for a while, since Fuchsia OS is early in development. We’ll update this post as we learn more about it.

Updated on 05-08-2017 by Christian de Looper: Added news that Fuchsia has gotten a user interface.