Although Chrome is the most widely used web browser in the world, Google cannot relax. And even less seeing how one of its biggest rivals, Microsoft, is working to improve its new web browser, Edge, which already surpasses it in performance and functions. For this reason, the search giant has started to improve many of the functions that it had abandoned and to develop new features that allow it to continue being the leader of the browsers. And so, for the arrival of Chrome 90 , Google has prepared several aces up its sleeve that users of the Canary branch can already try.
In January 2021, Google released version 88 of the browser for all users, a very interesting version since, among many other things, it permanently eliminated support for Flash. Google continues to work on the development of its browser, and the launch of version 90 of it will be marked by a series of very important changes and novelties such as the ones we are going to see below.
What’s new we will see in Chrome 90
It is still too early to talk about everything that Chrome 90 will bring. Google still has time to develop and implement other changes and other features that help improve the usability of it when visiting web pages, or simply improve security and privacy of the users.
What will come for sure with this version are the features that have been arriving, day after day, in the Canary branch of the browser.
PWA enhancements
Progressive web applications, or PWAs, are becoming increasingly popular with users. These applications allow us to install and use websites on our computer as if they were applications installed in the operating system. Instead of opening the browser, and all its functions, PWAs allow us to visit websites within an isolated window that is much lighter and more comfortable to use.
One of the ugliest aspects of these progressive web apps is the status bar at the bottom. When we use normal navigation it may make sense, but in these PWAs it doesn’t. And luckily Chrome is going to remove it very soon.
We can activate it with the flag: Desktop PWAs remove status bar .
New features in the PDF viewer
Edge is many steps ahead of Chrome in its PDF viewer. However, Google has an ace up its sleeve, which Microsoft has not yet implemented, which we will see very soon. And it is that, as of Chrome 90, we will be able to see the properties of the PDF documents that we open with the browser using a simple keyboard shortcut. Knowing the metadata of these documents can be useful to know in depth all the information of the document.
We can activate it with the flag: PDF Viewer Document Properties .
Privacy Sandbox
Google wants to end third-party cookies. But it is clear that you cannot give up on identifying and tracking users. And this is where Privacy Sandbox comes in. This new initiative aims to replace third-party cookies with browser-specific technologies and APIs in order to guarantee the privacy of users while continuing to show personalized advertising.
This goes for a long time, but as of Chrome 90 we can activate the first stage of the process: separate our own cookies from those of third parties. Then Google will start working on its own APIs until it achieves the goal.
We can activate it with the flag: Privacy Sandbox Settings .
Tips for Chrome
Surely more than once some of the news that some of the versions of this browser has brought has passed us by. And to prevent this from happening again, Google is working to add, within the help menu, a new option called “Tips for Chrome” that will allow us to see, at a glance, all the news.
We can activate it with the flag: Show Show “Tips for Chrome” in the Help portion of the main menu .
Scroll on the tabs
If we are one of those who accumulate many tabs open at the same time, surely more than once we have found that, when all of them are piled up, it is impossible to see which tab each one corresponds to. Google wants to solve this problem by preventing these from becoming so small, and for this, what it is going to do is add a scroll to the tab bar. In this way, when we accumulate many of them in the upper bar, we can move between them more easily.
We can activate it with the flag: Scrollable TabStrip .
When will it arrive
For now, only users of the Canary version of Chrome will be able to use these new features. All these changes will reach the stable version of the browser with the launch of Google Chrome 90 .
This version will arrive, except for last minute delays, on March 2, 2021 . But before that, we will all have to go through Chrome 89, a version more focused on correcting errors than bringing news.
