Google Duo now works simultaneously on your phone and tablet (Update: Some Chromebooks)

Update 07/09/2018 at 2:24 P.M. EST: In the article below, we talk about how you can finally use Google Duo on multiple devices at the same time. However, at the time we published the article, Chromebooks weren’t supported — even if they run Android apps.

It looks like that is changing, as Chrome Unboxed is reporting that Duo is working on the Samsung Chromebook Plus V2, HP Chromebook x2, and Acer Chromebook Tab 10. Curiously, it is not yet working on Google’s own Pixelbook. But with some Chromebooks seeing support, it’s likely only a matter of time before Duo is widely available to all Chrome OS laptops, assuming they support Android apps.

Original Article (07/04/18): If you’re a regular user of Google Duo – the video chat app that Google confusingly spun out from Google Hangouts – you likely have been frustrated with the fact that you can only use the app on one device.

Today, perhaps to line up with Independence Day here in the States, Google is lifting that restriction and enabling you to use Duo on multiple phones and tablets. However, your computer – even your Chromebook with Android support – is still a no-go.

For those of you who don’t use Google Duo regularly, during the sign-up process you must connect your phone number to the app. Even now, you still need to sign up for Duo using your phone number before you can do anything else. However, previously you couldn’t share that account with any other devices, which now is possible.

Upon signing into Duo, you will at some point today or in the future be greeted with this screen:

That’s Google’s announcement of the policy change. Once you’ve seen that, your account is eligible for multiple-device usage.

Grab your second device (a smartphone or tablet) and fire up Duo. If the same Google account is already connected to that secondary device, then you simply acknowledge that and you’re all set: you can use the same profile on two different devices.

If you have a different Google account (or none) on the secondary device, you will have to add the one that’s on your primary device so that the secondary Duo knows to connect the two.

Using Duo on your primary and secondary device is pretty much the same experience. However, there is one notable thing that you can do on the secondary device but not the primary: sign out of your Duo account. On the primary device, you are only able to delete your account, but on the secondary device, you can either delete your account entirely or simply sign out of Duo to then sign in with a different account.

This makes sense as your phone number is connected to your Duo profile, and you can’t delete your phone number from your phone, so you thus can’t “sign out” of your Duo account. If you change your phone’s number (by swapping the SIM, for example), you would have to delete your account, not sign out of your account.

If this is all confusing, well…welcome to the Google ecosystem. Regardless, it is nice that we can finally use Duo on all the devices we own, even if that for some reason doesn’t yet involve Android-supported Chromebooks. Hopefully, that will come soon as well.