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There's a weird page at chrome.com/photowall/ which only shows an input box for entering a password. The title of the page is "temp login". A photo wall is a gallery of photos, so this could be a Chrome experiment that shows your photos in an interesting way, maybe using WebGL.


Chrome.com is a domain owned by Google since 2012 and it's used for various Chrome-related experiments, games, promotions and services like Chrome Maze, Roll It, Racer, Super Sync Sports, Give a Chromebook, Good to Know.

The domain was previously used by "Chrome Systems Inc/DealerTrack, Inc. which notified customers in March that as of  September 1, 2012 they will stop using the domain name Chrome.com and use the domain name Chromedata.com instead". Some pages created by the previous owner are still indexed by Google, even if they no longer exist.

{ Thanks, Florian K. }

There's something very annoying about Chrome. It now keeps all the old versions of your extensions and apps. I remember that Chrome used to only keep the current version and the previous version, just like it handles Chrome releases.

If you've installed many extensions and apps, it's likely that the Extensions folder from your Chrome profile uses many hundreds of megabytes. Some apps are pretty big now: for example, the latest version of Polycraft uses 76.6 MB. It's obvious that a single application could use 1 GB after a few updates.

Here's another example: the LastPass extensions. I've checked my profile folder and Chrome keeps 11 versions of this extension since October 2013. Total disk usage: 107 MB, instead of 9.6 MB for the latest version.


Obviously, the old versions are useless and this is a bug. There's a bug report from a Google employee here and it mentions that "the Google+ Photos app is a fairly large app (56MB) which updates frequently (weekly?). It does not appear that older versions get deleted. For the G+ photos app which takes 56MB, I had over 700MB of old versions on my drive."

Until Google fixes this bug, you can manually delete the old versions. Go to your profile folder and open the Extensions folder. Every extension and app has its own folder with a cryptic name (the extension ID), so you can open each one and delete all the subfolders except for the most recent one. For example, LastPass's folder is named hdokiejnpimakedhajhdlcegeplioahd and it has a subfolder for each version. You can sort them by name or by date and keep the most recent version (3.0.22_0).

Google Now cards are available in the latest Chrome Canary build for Windows and Mac (34.0.1788). You only need to go to chrome://flags/#enable-google-now , then switch from "Default" to "Enabled" and click "Relaunch Now" at the bottom of the page to restart the browser. Chrome Canary and the stable Chrome can run at the same time, but the Canary version is updated daily, has the latest features and it's for developers and early adopters.


If you're signed into Chrome, you should see a Google Now notification and then a list of cards. "Google Now on your desktop! Stay connected to what you need to know, across all devices," informs the first card. Google Now cards are displayed using Chrome's notification interface in the Windows system tray or the Mac menu bar. Just look for the bell icon.



"If you use Google Now on your mobile device, you can see certain Now cards on your desktop computer if you're signed into Chrome, including weather, sports scores, commute traffic, and event reminders cards. Some of these cards may be based on the location of your mobile device. Google Now on Chrome shows a subset of the Now cards you see on your mobile device, which uses your device's location. You can edit your location settings (Location Reporting and Location History) on your Android or iOS device at any time," informs Google.


{ Thanks, Michael. }

Chrome's data compression feature is now available for all Android and iOS users. The latest releases of Chrome for Android and iOS add this feature, which was previously limited to Chrome Beta for Android and some randomly picked users.

"When enabled, Chrome's data compression and bandwidth management can reduce data usage by up to 50% while browsing the web on Chrome for Android and iOS. This feature also enables Chrome's Safe Browsing technology which helps protect you from malicious webpages," informs Google.


This feature uses a Google proxy to compress all the pages you visit, except for HTTPS pages and the sites you visit in Chrome's incognito mode.

"When the Data Compression Proxy feature is enabled, Chrome Mobile opens a connection between your phone and one of the optimization servers running in Google's datacenters and relays all non-encrypted HTTP requests over this connection. (...) The browser-to-proxy connection runs over SSL, meaning that your browsing session is encrypted between your device and Google's servers. The proxy also performs intelligent compression and minification of HTML, JavaScript and CSS resources, which removes unnecessary whitespace, comments, and other metadata which are not essential to render the page. These optimizations, combined with mandatory gzip compression for all resources, can result in substantial bandwidth savings," informs Google. DNS lookups are performed by the proxy, while the images are converted to WebP and the resulting images are up to 80% smaller.

Chrome for iOS also adds the page translation feature, which was previously limited to Chrome for Android and desktop, while Chrome for Android lets you add to the homescreen shortcuts to any page or web app.

As usually, "these updates will be rolling out over the next few days", so don't expect to get the latest version of Mobile Chrome right away.

This is not Chrome OS, it's a new Chrome interface that's only used in Windows 8 in the Metro mode (Modern UI). "Manage multiple Chrome windows and quickly get to your favorite Chrome Apps with an integrated app launcher. On the desktop, we've updated the default styling of UI elements like form controls and scrollbars to match the sleek design of the new Chrome Metro interface," informs Google.


Google ignored the Metro design language and decided to bring the Chrome OS interface to Windows 8. You'll get an app launcher, a shelf where you can pin your favorite apps, you can add new windows, move them, minimize them, maximize them, resize them and close them.

It's a great way to promote Chromebooks. You run Chrome in an immersive environment, as if it were the only application from your computer.

You can switch between the desktop mode and the Metro mode by clicking the menu and selecting "Relaunch Chrome on the desktop/in Windows 8 mode". Relaunching Chrome on the desktop didn't work well for me: only one of the windows was properly restored. "Chrome remembers the mode you last used. For example, if you exit Chrome from your desktop, you'll automatically be in desktop mode the next time you open Chrome," explains Google.

Chrome doesn't run in Windows 8 RT, but Windows for ARM isn't very popular.

This is no longer limited to Chrome Beta: the latest stable Chrome release lets you add supervised users. They're just like regular Chrome users, except that they're attached to your Google account and you can block sites and check their browsing activity from a Google page. This could be used as a parental control feature and it's more useful if you have a Chromebook.

"A supervised user is a special type of Chrome user who can browse the web with guidance. Under the supervision of the manager, a supervised user can browse the web and sign in to websites. Supervised users don't need a Google Account or an email address because the manager creates a profile for the supervised user through the manager's Google Account," informs Google.

When you add an user from the settings page, make sure to enable "this is a supervised user". You need to sign in to Chrome using a Google Account to use this feature. For Chromebooks, you have to sign out, click "add user" on the lower-left corner and "Create a supervised user".


You'll see this dialog and you'll get a confirmation email.



Chrome windows associated with the new profile have a "supervised user" label next to the icon. Supervised users can't enable Chrome Sync and can't install extensions or apps from the Chrome Web Store.


You can managed supervised users from this page: https://www.google.com/settings/chrome/manage (short URL: chrome.com/manage). Manage permissions, block domains, lock or unlock Google SafeSearch, check the browsing activity. SafeSearch is turned on by default and can't be disabled by the supervised user.



If the supervised user wants to visit a site that's blocked, he'll see this message and can click "Request permission". Chrome's dashboard page will show the requests and the manager can approve them.


"Supervised User Profiles" is a beta feature, even if it's now available in the stable Chrome releases.

I've noticed that many music/video sites now add a "play" Unicode character to the title when a video or a song is playing, so you can quickly find noisy tabs. Here are some examples: YouTube, Dailymotion, Soundcloud.

Chrome 32 added a similar feature, but it works for any site. It shows a small icon next to the title if the tab is playing audio.


I tested this feature and it works for HTML5 video/audio and Flash content. Mute the video or pause it and the Chrome icon disappears.

The sound icon is redundant for YouTube and the other sites I've mentioned, but it's still displayed for consistency.


Chrome shows two other special icons for using the webcam and casting.

These features aren't new, but they're pretty useful and they might help you become more productive when you download files in Google Chrome.

1. Do you want to open a file immediately after Chrome downloads it? You don't have to wait, just click the file in the download bar and you should see something like "opening in X minutes".


2. If you always want to open certain files after Chrome downloads them, click the arrow icon and check "always open files of this type". You can use this for .mp4 files or .torrent files, for example.


3. How to move to the desktop a file you've just downloaded? Just drag it from the download bar and drop it onto your desktop.

4. Some files open directly in Chrome: PDF documents, MP4 videos, MP3 songs. How to download them? Use a keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+S or Command-S for Mac. Another option is to right click and select "save as". You can also right click the link to the file and select "save link as".

5. Don't worry about closing the Chrome window accidentally while downloading some files. Chrome shows a warning: "download in progress".


6. Manage your downloads by clicking "Downloads" in the Chrome or pressing Ctrl+J (Command-J for Mac). Use the search box to find a file you've downloaded last month, right-click the URL and you can copy it, click "Show in folder" to locate the file. You can also clear all the downloads.

Google Voice Search works in Chrome for desktop, not only in Android and iOS. Just click the microphone icon from the search box and you can tell Google what do you want to know, assuming that you have a microphone.

Now you can bypass the microphone icon and use the hotword "OK Google" when you're using Google search or the new tab page. You need to install this extension first.


"Chrome will listen for you to say 'Ok Google' and then send the sound of the next thing you say, plus a few seconds before, to Google," informs the options page. By default, Google stops listening after 5 minutes to reduce battery consumption on a laptop.

Hotword detection works offline and doesn't send the recording to Google's servers until you say "OK Google". You need to open a Google search page or go to the new tab page first, assuming that you have the updated new tab page which uses the Google homepage. The extension only works for google.com, not for other Google domains:


You can tell if Google is listening by checking the microphone icon from the search box:



Now Google handles Voice Search queries differently. In addition to providing voice feedback and using the previous query for disambiguation, Google now changes your query and removes unnecessary word. For example, if you tell Google "show me some Brad Pitt movies", Google will show results for [Brad Pitt movies].

Chrome has a lot of fascinating features you'll probably never use. Tony Hirst spotted one: open a new tab, type chrome://predictors in the omnibox and press Enter. This page shows some cool stats about the characters you've typed in the omnibox and the URLs you've selected.

For example, if you usually type "y", Chrome autocompletes the URL to youtube.com and you press Enter, you'll find this association in the table. There are also 3 values: hit count (how often you type those characters), miss count (how often you pick a different suggestion) and confidence score = hit_count/(hit_count+miss_count). Check "Filter zero confidences" to remove entries with a 0 confidence score. Green entries have a 1 confidence score, which means that the text is always associated with the URL.


You can find all the internal Chrome pages by going to chrome://chrome-urls/. For example, chrome://view-http-cache/ shows a list of all the URLs requested by the browser, chrome://plugins/ lets you see the plug-ins that are available in Chrome, chrome://components/ shows a list of components like Pepper Flash and Portable Native Client, which can be independently updated, chrome://flags/ shows a list of experimental features you can enable, while chrome://net-internals/ is a very advanced network logging and diagnostic tool.

{ Screenshot licensed as Creative Commons Attribution by Tony Hirst. }

Chrome's latest Dev channel release lets you create folders in the app launcher. If you use Chrome 33 (Dev, Canary) or Chromium 33 for Windows, you can paste this in the address bar:

chrome://flags/#enable-app-list-folder

Then click "Enable" next to "Enable the app list folder" and then click the "Relaunch now" button at the bottom of the page to restart the browser and enable the experimental feature.


"If enabled, user will be able to create app list folder by drag-and-drop," informs Google. It works just like in Android: drag one app on top of another to create a folder, then drag other apps to the folder.


Here's the Google folder from the screenshot above:


It's a simple feature that lets you organize your apps and reduce clutter. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well, at least not for me. After creating the folders, Chrome quickly removed them. Maybe it has something to do with syncing or maybe there are other bugs. It's an experimental feature, so I can't complain.

"These experimental features may change, break, or disappear at any time. We make absolutely no guarantees about what may happen if you turn one of these experiments on, and your browser may even spontaneously combust. (...) Please proceed with caution."

{ Thanks, Silviu. }

Now that Chrome is very popular, many applications bundle Chrome extensions. I've recently installed a security suite from Kaspersky, which bundled 5 Chrome extensions. Chrome's menu shows notifications if there are extensions added by other apps, so the extensions are not installed automatically.

When Chrome added support for extensions, any app could install them automatically and you could easily install .crx files from any site. Google changed this and made it more difficult to install extensions outside the Chrome Web Store.


Apparently, there are some Windows applications that found some loopholes and bypassed Chrome's security features, so Chrome's engineers decided to block almost all Chrome extensions from other sources than the Chrome Web Store.


From the Chromium blog:

"Many services bundle useful companion extensions, which causes Chrome to ask whether you want to install them (or not). However, bad actors have abused this mechanism, bypassing the prompt to silently install malicious extensions that override browser settings and alter the user experience in undesired ways, such as replacing the New Tab Page without approval. Since these malicious extensions are not hosted on the Chrome Web Store, it's difficult to limit the damage they can cause to our users. As part of our continuing security efforts, we're announcing a stronger measure to protect Windows users: starting in January on the Windows stable and beta channels, we'll require all extensions to be hosted in the Chrome Web Store."


There are some exceptions to this rule: developers and power users will still be able to install unpacked extensions and business users will still be able deploy extensions. Everyone else will have to install extensions from the Chrome Web Store, where extensions have to comply with Google's terms and conditions and where users can rate extensions and post reviews.

While this new rule is limited to extensions and Chrome for Windows, it's interesting to notice that Chrome is closer to the walled garden approach from iOS than the more open Android style. Even though Android has bigger security issues than Chrome, it still allows you to install APK files from any site, so you can even use third-party app stores. Google's Android team chose to disable this feature by default and to also add a tool that checks the files you install, while the Chrome team increasingly limited the support for extensions installed outside the Store.

Chrome Web Store is a great place, but not all extensions belong there. Some break Google's terms by allowing you to download YouTube videos, download music files from services like Grooveshark or allow you to use Pandora outside US. From the store's policies: "we don't allow products or services that facilitate unauthorized access to content on websites, such as circumventing paywalls or login restrictions. We also don't allow products or services that encourage, facilitate, or enable the unauthorized access, download, or streaming of copyrighted content or media". No nudity, no online gambling, no gratuitous violence, no hate speech and the rules can always change to include other restrictions.

Fortunately, the developer option will still work: replace the crx extension with zip, extract the files to a new folder, go to the Chrome extensions page, enable developer mode, click "load unpacked extension" and select the folder you've created.

The last time I wrote about Chrome's updated new tab page, I complained about the animated doodles that distract you every time you open a new tab. Since Chrome replaced the new tab page with Google's homepage, you also get the doodles, including those that are animated or interactive.

Here's what I asked Peter Kasting, from the Chrome team: "If nothing can be done about the new interface, my only request would be to show a static version of the animated doodles and click a button to start the animation. That would be a big improvement. It's really annoying to see the same animation over and over again when opening a new tab page."

The good news is that Google did exactly that. The updated new tab page now shows a static version of the doodle and you need to click a "play" button to start the animation.

Google's navigation menu is still not customizable. The app launcher interface allows Google to add many cool features like reordering apps, removing them or adding new ones, but for now they're not available.

Carlos Jeurissen released a Chrome extension that lets you customize the app launcher. You can select from a very long list of Google services, including Google Scholar, Google Play Music, Google Keep, Chrome Web Store. You can also reorder the services or remove the Google products you don't use often. The upgraded launcher has up to 5 columns and as many rows as you want, but I suggest to pick less than 20 services.


"In the settings page, you can define which shortcuts you want to display in the app launcher via drag and drop (hold your mouse on a shortcut in the left list, drag it to the right list, and release your mouse). The settings page also allows you to filter the 175+ Google shortcuts."


My favorite feature is that settings are synced, so you can use other computers and see the same Google menu in Chrome. You may need to reload the new tab page after changing the menu, since Google caches it.

There's also an option to add custom shortcuts, so you can link to non-Google web apps like Dropbox, Vimeo, Twitter, or Imgur.

{ Thanks, Florian K. }

If you like Chrome's updated new tab page for the desktop and you have an Android device, you can enable a similar new tab page in Chrome Beta for Android.


You first need to install Chrome Beta for Android if you don't have it already, then open a new tab and type this in the address bar:

chrome://flags/#enable-new-ntp

Then press Enter, pick "Enabled" from the drop-down below "Enable the new NTP" and tap "Relaunch Now" at the bottom of the window to restart the browser.


The updated new tab page no longer shows 3 sections. You only get a big Google logo, a search box that points you to the browser's omnibox, a list of the most visited pages and 2 buttons for bookmarks and tabs from other devices. Both buttons open new pages: the bookmarks page has a different interface (it's now a list instead of a grid), while the "other devices" page looks the same.



Chrome's blog informs that some Chrome Beta users might see the new interface automatically. "We've tested this New Tab page with a search bar on desktop and now want to bring the benefits, including a faster load time, to mobile as well. While you can search straight from the Omnibox in Chrome, we realized many users continue to visit their search engine's homepage before searching, so we wanted to make it faster for those users to search. We're always thinking about how to save milliseconds from every search you perform, and we hope this new feature will save you time on-the-go."

If the new interface has been enabled automatically, you can use the same instructions to disable it. Just pick "disabled" instead of "enabled".

The updated new tab page has some advantages: it loads quickly, it's consistent and it looks nice. Unfortunately, bookmarks and the list of tabs from other devices load in separate pages and you can no longer see them automatically when you open a new tab. I created a folder with mobile apps I frequently use and this folder used to be displayed when opening a new tab. This feature is no longer available in the new interface. Unlike the desktop Chrome, the mobile Chrome doesn't support extensions and you can't customize the new tab page.

This "baby" new tab page could be useful to help users discover the omnibox and use it to search the web, but what happens when they realize that the big search box is redundant? And what about the people who already used the omnibox?

The latest release of Chrome Beta for Android lets you add to the home screen a shortcut to the page you're currently visiting. Until now, you had to bookmark the page, go to the new tab page, long tap the bookmark and select "add to home screen". If you use the latest Chrome Beta, you can open the Chrome menu and tap "add to home screen".

There's even a bonus feature: "Sites launched in this way will open in a normal Chrome for Android window, unless they include the mobile-web-app-capable meta tag. Those sites will instead open in a special fullscreen Chrome for Android window that doesn't display tabs, buttons, menus, or the Omnibox. Try adding a shortcut to weight.aerotwist.com to see this in action."





This is a good news for web apps fans and it's nice to see that a feature that was available in iPhoneOS 1.x finally finds its way to the mobile Chrome. Unfortunately, Chrome for iOS won't add a similar feature because third-party iOS apps can't add shortcuts.

Another new feature integrates Chrome with Google Wallet. "requestAutocomplete() makes it easier for users to fill out online forms by offering web developers programmatic access to the browser's autocomplete information (with the user's explicit permission). For this first release, we've made it work for web payments. On sites with requestAutocomplete(), users will be able to either use their existing payment data stored with the browser or enter new details through a browser-provided interface." This works in Chrome Beta for Android, Windows, and Chrome OS.

What to do if you only want to see web search suggestions in Chrome's omnibox, not suggestions from Google's top results, your bookmarks, your browsing history or previously typed URLs. Type ? in the omnibox and then start typing your query. You can also use these keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+K or Ctrl+E for Windows and Linux, ⌘-Option-F for Mac.



Chrome will still show suggestions from your previous searches. If you use this trick in the incognito mode, Chrome will only show suggestions from your search history.

I'm not sure why Chrome's app launcher doesn't have a keyboard shortcut, but it's pretty easy to add one. For Windows XP, right-click the desktop shortcut for Chrome App Launcher and select "Properties", go to the "Shortcut key" field and enter a keyboard shortcut. If you use Windows 7 or 8, press Shift while right-clicking the colorful grid icon from the taskbar, select "Properties", go to the "Shortcut key" field and enter a keyboard shortcut. I picked Ctrl+Shift+A.


Now I can just press Ctrl+Shift+A and the launcher will show up. I can type a Google query, the first letters from a Chrome app or just use the arrow keys to pick an app.


Google now even shows suggestions from the Chrome Web Store, so you can quickly install apps without visiting the store. I wouldn't recommend doing that, unless you really trust the app. For example, you can search for "gmail" and quickly install Gmail Offline.

When Chrome was released 5 years ago, many people were surprised to see that the browser didn't install in the Program Files folder. Chrome was Windows-only back then and Google wanted to make sure that users can install Chrome, even if they don't use admin accounts. Per-user installs worked well, but Google had to create a separate system-level MSI installer for enterprise.

Now it looks like Chrome has a smart Windows installer that combines both approaches. The setup file tries to install Chrome in the Program Files folder and switches to the AppData folder if it fails.


"We did change the download page to install system-level by default (and fall back to user level if that fails or the user says "no" to the UAC prompt). Installing in AppData was never a security measure, it was for convenience to make sure people could install Chrome even without admin rights. Our data shows that *preferring* a system level (Program Files) install with a fallback to user level improves the install success rate," said Mark Larson from Google.

Apparently, this is a feature launched last year, but I haven't noticed it until today, when I had to reinstall Chrome because of this error: "Update failed (error: 7) An error occurred while checking for updates: This computer already has a more recent version of Google Chrome. If the software is not working, please uninstall Google Chrome and try again."


Chrome's help center still recommends to use an alternate installer "to install Google Chrome for all user accounts on a Windows computer. By doing so, you'll replace all other versions of Chrome that may already be installed on your computer for other user accounts." For Mac, "you can install Chrome for all user accounts on your computer if you're signed in as an administrator."