It’s not as slick as the fully reflective, Daft Punk-like helmet Lewis Hamilton had at Suzuka earlier this year, but as Formula 1 drivers take to the improvised racetrack in Las Vegas this week, McLaren rookie Oscar Piastri will be wearing a *Google Chrome helmet, that matches the sponsor’s wheel covers on his car.
Well, if it’s rolled out to you. With Chrome 119, Google has been slowly rolling out the ability to check how much memory that tab is using just by hovering over the tab, 9to5Google reports. 9to5Google also has details on the flag to enable if you want to switch the feature on for yourself. Handy!
That’s all thanks to Chrome’s Core Web Vitals feature, which allows website owners and developers to evaluate how well their site performs. According to a blog post shared by Google, Core Web Vitals and other small tweaks also made the average page load in Chrome 166ms faster.
Back in August, the Chrome browser moved its download notifications from a bar at the bottom of the window to an icon at top. However, if you didn’t like that change, you could still use a flag to change it back. People are now reporting that, with the latest update of Chrome, that flag is gone, and you’re going to be stuck with the new notification icon. Oh, well.
YouTube’s been cracking down on ad blocker usage this year. I’m fine coughing up $14 a month for YouTube Premium, but I can’t help but be amused at the user agent workaround Enderman posted yesterday (spotted by Windows Central).
Using a Google-made Chrome extension, you can put a digital name tag on your browser that basically says, “Hello! My Name is Windows Phone,” and YouTube won’t show you ads.
YouTube hasn’t specifically said that turning your browser into three Windows Phones in a trenchcoat is against its terms of service, but all the same: Proceed at your own risk.
Google says that it’s also making privacy options easier to access:
You’ll soon be able to quickly delete your browsing history, site data, and now also including recent tabs. There will also be a new 15 minute option when selecting the duration. Just click the three dots in the top-right corner of your Chrome browser and select ‘Clear browsing data’.
It’s already live in Chrome beta if you just can’t wait.
This tool allowed Chrome users to, by right-clicking a phone number in their browser, initiate a phone call on a linked Android phone. The feature was killed in Chrome 116 with little fanfare.
There’s been some outcry about this decision, as 9to5Google reports, and it appears that Google has taken notice. A member of the Chromium team has reportedly told upset commenters that they will “have a conversation with our product team about whether we can continue to support the feature”.
9to5Google reports that the side panel will let you see Google Search results while you’re browsing the web on a main panel. Right now, the side panel lets you access things like your reading list, and it looks like you’ll still be able to get to that, too.
The publication says it’s seeing the side panel on Chrome 116, but a couple of us at The Verge haven’t gotten it yet despite being up to date.
Some code sleuthing by Kevin C. Tofel suggests that the Chrome browser could soon be decoupled from ChromeOS V116 in favor of the Linux browser Lacros.
Robby Payne over at Chrome Unboxed explains:
Lacros will be the Chrome browser you get on every Chromebook and because it won’t be attached to the core of the OS any longer, it will facilitate quicker browser patches without requiring a full OS update.
[About Chromebooks]
