Google Chrome is a much more complete browser than it seems at first glance. Although we can activate, deactivate and configure many options, Google also hides many other functions that only it can control. If we discover them, these functions can help us enjoy our browser much more and get much more out of it. And, for this reason, today we are going to show you 5 of these secret functions, which are hidden, and that you must activate if you browse with the Google browser.
What are the Flags?
In addition to the standard browser settings menu, Chrome hides a second panel of more advanced options known as “flags.” These “flags” are experimental functions found in the browser, some activated by default, and others deactivated, which Google uses to see how they work and debug them before bringing them to all users. If the experiment does not finish convincing Google, it can be deactivated at any time, and even deleted without a trace.
The options that we are going to see today are available to all users who use version 108 of the browser.
All these experimental functions (there are dozens of them) can be found in the “Chrome://flags” panel.
5 secret features of Chrome
Although in general we do not recommend changing these experimental options, if we do not know exactly what we are doing, the options that we indicate below will not only not cause any problems, but will even significantly improve our experience.
Improve battery life
The first of these tricks has arrived as a novelty with the release of version 108 of the browser. It is a function that allows us to extend battery life when we use Chrome on a laptop. To do this, it makes use of a series of functions to suspend scripts in the background, free up memory and, thus, avoid unnecessary waste of resources.
We can activate this function by writing the following in the address bar. And, once the flag is activated, we can find the new entry in the configuration menu.
chrome://flags/#battery-saver-mode-available
Smoother scrolling
Another of the experimental functions that we can find is to improve the scrolling of websites. As always, when we scroll, the browser jumps on the pages, something that Microsoft managed to solve. And, after many years with this problem, we can finally eliminate it. To do this, we simply have to access this link, and activate the experimental function that appears there.
chrome://flags/#smooth-scrolling
Speed up internet
This is something that always comes in handy: being able to navigate faster. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula that allows us to do this. Although there are protocols and experimental projects that can help us to do so. One of these protocols is QUIC, a protocol, designed by Google, that seeks to make the web faster. So that Chrome can use this protocol, we simply have to activate it from here:
chrome://flags/#enable-quic
Speed up downloads
Now that we are browsing faster, what we have left to do is be able to download files from the Internet faster. For this there is an experimental function called “parallel downloads”. What it does is allow us to create several simultaneous downloads of a single file so that they are all downloaded at the same time and, therefore, we can have the fastest file on the computer.
chrome://flags/#enable-parallel-downloading
Improve performance
Finally, another of the problems that we can find in Chrome is performance. Chrome has always been a very heavy program, which consumes a lot of resources, and which, at times, is even very slow. Luckily, we can solve it in a very simple way: delegating many of the processes to a component that is more powerful than the processor: the graphics chip. In this way, it will be the graphics card that is in charge of the rasterization of the web elements, leaving the processor free for other tasks.
chrome://flags/#enable-gpu-rasterization
Undo all changes
If in the end we are not convinced by how the PC works, it is very easy to undo these changes. We can go one by one, changing the “Enabled” value that we have selected to activate it by “Default”, to return to the default value, or click on the “Reset all” button at the top to reset all these experimental functions to their default values.
