How To Check Your Chromebook Health With Built-In Diagnostics

Whether you’re a long-time user or brand new to the Chrome OS platform, you may not be too familiar with the Chromebook diagnostics app. The app was added only just recently to the platform, in version 90 of the OS. And it brings many tools to the table that were previously relegated only to third-party, browser- or Android-specific applications. But this time around, those are designed to work with Chromebooks explicitly.

Summarily, the Diagnostics app from Google offers a quick and painless way to check on the health of your Chromebook. And that’s exactly what this guide is here to explore.

Why would you want to run diagnostics?

Now, there is a number of reasons why users would want to run a diagnostic or test on a Chromebook. Not least of all, diagnostics can provide key details when it comes time to check whether an issue you’re experiencing is caused by your Chromebook. Or by software that you’re running on your Chromebook. Hardware problems should be immediately recognizable with a diagnostic test.

Conversely, if you’re looking to sell your Chromebook or just want to see how your battery is holding up, running diagnostics can be useful there too. Especially for those with older or more intensively-used Chrome OS gadgets, since batteries degrade over time and at a chiefly subjective rate.

What’s more, if there is an apparent problem and it happens to be associated with the hardware, diagnostics can point to the solution. If that happens to be with the memory, it may be that an app is using too much memory or storage. In which case, looking at the task manager might provide relief.

Or, if you’re receiving help from an IT department rather than fixing a problem yourself, the tool can help provide the necessary information so that a solution can be found. So let’s take a closer look at how to run diagnostics via the dedicated app on a Chromebook.

Two ways to access the diagnostics tool on your Chromebook

Of course, if you want to run a diagnostics test on a Chromebook, you’ll need to open that app first. And, as might be expected with a system-level tool for doing so, that’s not the most straightforward or intuitive app to find. Google didn’t simply add it to the app launcher, unfortunately. But there are at least two ways to find it, regardless. So let’s start by getting the app up and running. Since that’s accessed by a few methods in its own right.

1. The first method, perhaps counterintuitively, does require the app launcher. But the app isn’t found among those listed when you open up the app launcher completely. The easiest way to access the app launcher is by clicking or tapping on the concentric-ring-shaped icon at the bottom left of the interface on the Chrome OS shelf.
2. In the first pop-up to appear on the bottom portion of the screen, a search bar will be present. That search bar can be used without first clicking on it, simply by starting to type
3. Type out the word “diagnostics”
4. Tap or click on the first entry to appear, featuring a connect-the-dots style zig-zag line icon

The second method for opening Diagnostics is a bit more intuitive since it appears in the Settings app where you might expect. But it does take a few extra steps to get to.

1. Tap or click on the clock segment of the Chrome OS interface, near the bottom-left of the shelf
2. Click or tap to select the gear-shaped “Settings” icon to launch the settings app — the app can also be discovered in the app launcher via either a search or by navigating through the apps to find the gear-shaped Settings icon for the app
3. In the settings app, navigate to the “About Chrome OS” section via a click or tap on the link in the sidebar menu found at the left-hand side of the UI
4. Tap or click on the “Diagnostics” option, found near the bottom of the resulting menu at around the center point on the page

Now, either of these methods for accessing the Diagnostics app on a Chromebook will work as well as the other. And, of course, as you’ll notice in the images above, there’s no difference in where you’ll end up either. Both methods take you to exactly the same application with exactly the same UI and features. So you should focus on learning to use whichever method is most comfortable to you to make it easier to get back here in the future if you need it.

Diving deep into the features

Once you’ve opened Diagnostics on your Chromebook, you’ll be presented with a new window with a UI that may or may not be daunting. That’ll mostly depend on your experience with these types of apps on Chrome OS or on other operating systems. At the top of the page, the UI will present you with the codename for the mainboard used to produce your Chromebook. As well as a version number for the Chrome OS you happen to have updated most recently too.

In the case of our test device, an original Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, that’s going to show the codename “Kohaku.” And the version number will change over time. But, as of this writing, it now shows version 90.13816.0.

Under that information, there are three segments with more details. And with more details about the individual components being shown — Battery, CPU, and Memory.

How to use Diagnostics to check your Chromebook battery health

The first segment you’ll arrive at on exploring the Diagnostics app on your Chromebook is Battery. The most important takeaways here are that the system will also show the general battery health, without performing a test. The battery capacity, for example, is shown directly to the far-right from the segment title header. In the case of our test gadget, that’s a 6229mAh Battery.

Just under that, and under the battery bar with details about how long the battery should last from the current charge level, is even more information. Specifically, information about how healthy the battery is — represented as a percentage of overall health — as well as how many charges have been cycled through and the current rate of charge or discharge.

In each of those segments, hovering over the “i”-shaped information icon will give details about what the numbers mean.

1. To run a battery test, scroll or navigate to and then tap or click on the “Run Discharge test” button
2. Your Chromebook will start a controlled test over a set period of time. But it typically under a few minutes, with the UI showing how long remains
3. Once completed, the test will show how much battery has drained over the pre-determined time elapsed
4. As with each of the segments here, you can hover your mouse or long-press on any individual read-out to show what those figures mean

How to test memory and CPU

The next segment in the Diagnostics app for the Chromebook platform is CPU. And, as might be expected, that does the same as the tool does for the battery. Namely, pointing out that my current Chromebook is built around an “Intel Core i5-10210U” processor. And that it’s clocked at a base of 1.60GHz across 8 threads with a maximum turbo clock speed of 4.20GHz.

Beyond that, it showcases a graph, splitting the user usage of the CPU from the system-level processes. And, just below that, it tells you just how much of the processor is being used, aggregated across all cores, in the form of a percentage. With that figure displayed alongside the internal temperature and the current speed of the processor, in real-time.

1. To run a CPU test, scroll or navigate to and then tap or click on the “Run CPU test” button. It is worth noting, however, that if you have websites or apps open, they should be closed first. They will likely run out of memory and resources during the test. Any work that isn’t saved will likely be lost. The test itself will likely take under 10-minutes
2. As the test runs, the UI will show how much time remains as well as which test is running. And that works across four different categories. Including a Stress test, Cache test, Floating point accuracy test, and Prime search test. The UI also showcases buttons to stop the test, hide the results, and learn more about the tests themselves
3. During the test, it is also important to note that performance — from the user’s perspective — may degrade. The CPU and other components will be hard at work in the background. As a result, foreground activity will effectively be deprioritized as resources are allocated elsewhere
4. Once finished, the UI will show whether or not a test has failed or succeeded. Again, that’s with buttons linking to sites explaining the different tests that have run.

Finally, the Diagnostics app shows a rundown of the Memory usage for your Chromebook. Storage is not shown here. So you’ll want to refer to our other guide for that, which also addresses other resource management tools as well as using the built-in task manager.

In any case, this segment of the app does showcase how much of the overall available system RAM is in use. And, as with other segments of the UI, it does keep that info displayed in real-time.

1. To run a memory test, scroll or navigate to and then tap or click on the “Run Memory test” button. However, it’s worth noting that this test is the longest of the three. In my case, it took upwards of 30-minutes to complete. It’s also memory-intensive and could result in lost work. So work should be saved and open apps, windows, and tabs closed before proceeding
2. During the test, you won’t notice much going on. The amount of RAM in use, shown in the progress bar, will change throughout. But this test simply doesn’t provide much feedback to the user during the test. The test may also fail as shown in the images below if there’s too much foreground user activity
3. Upon completion of the Memory test, it will simply show that the test failed or was successful

Save a session log for sharing to report feedback or get community-based help

Now, as noted at the beginning of this guide, the information found here is arguably at its most useful when utilized to get deeper help. Whether that’s from Google support, OEM support, or the general Chromebook user community. The Diagnostics app is incredibly useful for taking a look under the hood. And, to that end, Google ensured that its app has a logging tool to capture that information for sharing with others.

1. To save a log of the test session from the Diagnostics app on your Chromebook, tap or click the “Save Session Log” button. That’s located at the very bottom of the Diagnostics app UI, so it can be found by scrolling down to the bottom of the page
2. The UI will ask you where you want to save the file. That will then be discoverable in the same location using the Files application. It will be saved as a plain text document