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Google has rolled out an update to the developer channel for Chrome OS with support for extended desktop functionality.

What that means is that you can plug in an external monitor to the HDMI or VGA port on a Chromebook and use the extra display for extra space… rather than just for mirroring whatever’s already on your laptop screen.

The latest dev update for Chrome OS also includes a newer version of Flash, the ability to re-order apps in the app list, and “intelligent window positioning,” to automatically arrange windows to show the most content if you don’t manually arrange them.

Bear in mind, some older Chromebook models might not be able to handle the high pixel count that you get when using multiple displays, but the newer models with Intel Celeron processors seem to be up to the task.

In order to take advantage of the new features you’ll need to make sure your Chromebook is on the Dev Channel. You can do that by clicking the Menu icon in the top right corner, choose Settings, and then tapping the Help option in the menu on the left side of the screen.

This will show you what version of Chrome you’re running. You can also tap the “More Info” item to bring up a box that lets you switch between Stable, Beta, and Dev channels.

Or you can just wait a while. Most features that are introduced in the Dev channel eventually make their way to beta and then stable updates.