Google Chrome will now preview pages before opening on Android

Google Chrome for Android is getting updated to include new Preview Page options. The feature will let users see the contents of a page before opening it on their phones. It is much like what you get on Apple’s Safari browser where if you hold on to a link you get a preview of the page. As per a report, Google has been working on this feature for the past two years. Now, it has started rolling out the feature to Chrome 89 for Android.

The feature was first spotted by 9to5Google. We were also able to verify it independently. If you want to preview a page before opening it, you need to long-press on a link in Google Chrome for Android and it will open the context menu. You’ll now see a new Preview page option between Open in incognito mode and Copy link address. When you open the Preview page, the app will display the page’s favicon, name, and domain in the top bar. It will also show an option to open the page in full screen as a part of a group of tabs from the host page. You can still close the Preview page by tapping on the close icon or by swiping down.

Google Chrome for Android Preview page

It is still a two-step process and not as simple as the one we get on Safari where you can long-press the link and a preview of the page pops up with other options. It can surely be improved and made easier to use on Chrome for Android.

If you don’t see the Preview page option on your Google Chrome for Android, don’t worry. The company is rolling out this feature with a stable version of Chrome 89 through a server-wide update. The update will also enable Web sharing on desktop, redesigned discover feed, customizable feed, and many other features.

 

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Google offers an optimized version of Chrome for Macs with Apple’s M1 chip

Apple’s new Macs with the in-house M1 silicon has left folks impressed with their blazing fast performance. After all, when a fanless MacBook Air easily outperforms an iMac with a top-of-the-line Intel processor that costs over thrice as much, you better believe the hype. However, as pointed by many in the first wave of reviews, Chrome continues to hog system resources even on the new Macs. Well, Google has a solution – an optimized version of Chrome tailored for Macs with the M1 chip at their heart.

As per a tweet by Google Chrome designer and developer Elvin, the company released the optimized version yesterday itself. When users head to the Chrome browser download page, they were offered an option to choose between two versions depending on their machine – Mac with Intel chip or Mac with Apple chip. However, the rollout was halted when some users started experiencing random crashes after downloading this M1 chip-optimized version of Chrome. 

On the official support forum, Google suggested some workarounds such as tweaking the Bluetooth settings for the app from the System Preferences section. However, it was mentioned that the issue will only affect Mac users who installed that optimized version on day 1, suggesting that an updated version with a fix will be rolled out soon. 

Separately, Google Chrome product manager Mark Chang tweeted that the team was aware of the issue and has stopped the rollout. However, the release of Chrome browser’s new build optimized for Macs with M1 chip is expected to resume later today. To recall, the new release being talked about here is v87.0 of Chrome that started rolling out yesterday on all platforms. 

The new version promises 5x lower CPU usage, 1.25 hours of additional battery life, and up to 25% faster opening time. It also brings a host of new features such as a new tab search tool that will allow users to quickly find a tab from a universal list of tabs, and action buttons in the URL bar that will take users directly to the requisite settings page based on their search query. 

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Chrome gets a huge performance boost and a useful tab search tool

Chrome browser has garnered a bad reputation for being a resource hog, and in my personal experience, it does lead to some serious throttling on machines with low-end hardware. Google has today announced that with v87 – which is now rolling out – the company is giving Chrome browser its biggest performance boost in years. And the numbers being touted by Google are pretty substantial.

25% faster, 5x lower CPU usage, and 1.25 hours of extra battery life

To start, Google claims to have reduced the CPU usage of Chrome by 5x, while simultaneously adding 1.25 hours of battery life as per internal benchmarks. This has been achieved by prioritizing active Chrome tabs in the foreground compared to other programs and functions, something Google calls Tab Throttling and Occlusion Tracking

These under-the-hood improvements to Chrome also ensure that the browser now opens up to 25% faster and page loading speed has also gone up by 7%, all the while using a lesser amount of RAM and cutting down on power consumption. And on the Android platform, Google claims that Chrome will now load pages almost instantaneously as users go back and forth

Universal tab search tool in Chrome browser

Google is also adding a few additional tools to the Chrome browser. The first one is a tab search feature. As the name makes it abundantly clear, users will be able to quickly find a tab from a universal list of tabs, irrespective of the windows or groups they are placed in. You can either scroll the whole tab list or just search its name from the search field. The tab search tool will first make its way to Chrome OS and will arrive on other platforms soon. 

Chrome Actions in the search bar
Chrome’s URL field will now also show action buttons based on your query

Google is also making the universal search bar at the top in Chrome even more useful. Now, when users type a relevant query that resembles a settings option, they’ll see an action button that will take them directly to the requisite settings page. For example, when you type delete history in the search bar, you will also see an action button that will guide you to the appropriate page in Chrome’s settings section where you can delete your browser history. 

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Google boosts the security of Chrome browser for Android and iOS

Google has today announced a host of new security features that will further boost the security of the Chrome browser on Android and iOS with the release of version 86. The first one is the compromised password protection. As the name clearly suggests, Chrome will tell users that the credentials they’re allowing Chrome to remember have been compromised

To do so, Chrome sends a copy of the log-in credentials to Google by using a special form of encryption that prevents even the search giant from extracting the username and password. In case the password has been compromised before, Google will tell users to change the same, and will also redirect them to the page where they can change the password

Google is also bringing the Safety Check feature to Chrome for Android and iOS. This feature checks for compromised passwords, tells users if Safe Browsing is on, and if they are using the most recent version of the browser with the latest security tools. Additionally, the updated version of Chrome will finally enable the password autofill feature on iOS

Plus, the iOS client will also get an extra layer of security by adding support for biometric authentication. The web browsing app’s version 86 on iOS adds support for Face ID, Touch ID and device passcode that has to be entered before the autofill password feature jumps into action. However, users will first have to enable Chrome autofill from the app’s Settings section.

Additionally, the Enhanced Safe Browsing experience that arrived on the browser’s desktop client earlier this year, will also be making its way to the Chrome app for Android. Plus, the desktop and Android builds of Chrome v86 will introduce mixed form warnings. This feature alerts users when they are interacting with a non-secure element on a secure HTTPS protocol page. Additionally, it might even block potentially hazardous downloads embedded on secure pages. 

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Chrome now lets you organize tabs into groups and makes opening them 10% faster

Google demoed a tab grouping feature for Chrome in May, but it was limited only to the beta channel back then. Today, the search giant has announced that users on the stable channel can now organize their tabs into groups for easier identification. Just right click on a Chrome tab, and follow this path – Add tab to group > New group. You can then pick up a name for the group and also color code it for easier identification. Here, have a look:

From there, you can drag and drop tabs into a group with ease. More importantly, groups will be saved and will spring back to life as soon as you restore the closed window.

Additionally, Google says it has made a few improvements that will make Chrome tabs load up to 10 times faster. Another useful feature coming to Chrome is the ability to fill out PDF forms and save them directly in Chrome. Moreover, when users open the PDF file again, they can start from the same point where they left off.

PDF-Editor.gif

Moreover, Chrome users will soon see a miniaturized window preview at the top of the screen while switching tabs. This tweak has been made with tablets and touchscreen devices in mind, and is first coming to Chromebooks soon. This is how it looks:

TouchpadTab_Manager.gif

Additionally, Google is also testing a new tab view format that will let users see a small preview of a tab when they hover the cursor over it. This will surely come in handy when you have a lot of tabs from the same website opened across multiple tabs. This feature is first coming to the beta channel, and here’s how it looks:

Hover_Preview.gif

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Chrome’s “Kaleidoscope” page will put all streaming services in one place

It is no doubt that many of us have subscribed to multiple streaming services, and when it comes to accessing them quickly on a PC, we rely on solutions like a bookmark or putting a card on the browser homepage. But if you rely on Chrome browser to access streaming services on your PC, a neat new feature is coming your way.

First spotted by Chrome Story, Google is working on a new project called Chrome Kaleidoscope that will aggregate all your favorite streaming services in one place, or rather, a single page. The page, which is not yet widely functional, is accessible on the chrome://kaleidoscope URL in the experimental Canary channel.

The Chrome Kaleidoscope URL currently shows the above message (Image: Chrome Story)

As per screenshots obtained by Chrome Story, the aforementioned page will show icons for services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+, which can be clicked to open the desired streaming service. However, the Chrome Kaleidoscope project currently appears to be stuck in the internal testing phase and there is no concrete information as to when it will be rolled out widely.

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Chrome will stop being so demanding with the battery of your Mac

Google has been working on improving its Chrome browser. We have received information claiming that the Android version of this browser will soon jump on the 64-bit architecture, and a recent Windows 10 update has also helped Chrome reduce RAM usage. Now we have great news for Mac users, as Google may be working to reduce the toll on your device’s battery life.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Google will address long-lasting battery life issues on Macs. Chrome would improve its “tab throttling” to prioritize active tabs, and reduce resource drain from background tabs. It would have a “dramatic impact on battery and performance,” and Max Christoff, director of Chrome browser engineering, said that “This is an ongoing investment in improvements to speed, performance and battery life.” This comes as great news, as Chrome is usually criticized for poor use of RAM, battery draining, and privacy concerns. Now, we only have to wait and see just how the browser improves.

Source MacRumors

Via The Wall Street Journal

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Pocketnow Daily: Apple’s iOS 14 Plans DON’T Make Sense… (video)

Today’s deals include the latest Apple MacBook Air and more

Deals. The latest MacBook Air is $100 off on Amazon, leaving the 8GB of RAM, 256GB of SSD configuration for $899 shipped, but you can get the 512GB variant for $1199. The 2018 11in iPad Pro is getting a $395 discount, leaving the Wi-Fi only, 1TB of storage variant for $954. The 10.5in iPad Air is also $30 off which leaves it at $459. Finally, the Kindle Paperwhite is also $30 off which leaves it at $99 shipped with 2x the storage.

HUAWEI MateBook 13 AMD Edition with Ryzen 5 3500U processor goes official

Huawei just updated their MateBook 13 line with a new AMD Edition. It’s powered by a Ryzen 5 3500U processor and it comes equipped with Radeon Vega 8 Graphics. It has a new 2K Full View Display with an 88% screen to body ratio. According to Huawei it has a new “shark fin-inspired” cooling system that compromises low noise for high performance fans. It also has other features like Dolby Atmos, DDR4 RAM, and PCIe NVMe SSD memory. It starts at £699 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD at the Huawei Store and selected retailers.

It seems that Google Chrome will reduce RAM usage with the latest Windows 10 updates

Come on you’ve seen the Linus video, Chrome and RAM don’t get along, especially when it comes to Windows Computers. According to Windows Latest, the recent Windows 10 update introduces new segment heap memory improvements. This is a method to reduce the overall memory usage of Win32 apps like Chrome on the latest versions of Windows. It’s already being used on Microsoft’s Edge which is based on Chromium and it shows memory reduction of up to 27% in some early tests. It’s kind of complicated for Google to simply change this because that would require them to build Chrome on a different Windows SDK but, we hope they update it in the near future.

We could have a real-life leak of the ASUS ROG Phone 3

A couple of days ago we covered how the ASUS ROG Phone 3 went through certifications revealing new specs. Now, we got a new leak from Weibo and it’s actually a hands on image as well as an 8sec video clip of it. The ROG Phone 2 brought 2 cameras and on this picture we can see a bigger camera array with at least three cameras. The ROG Phone 3 is expected to bring a 64MP main sensor capable of 16MP images through pixel binning and we hope that the third sensor is a telephoto instead of a macro lens. The picture also shows a Tencent Games logo at the back which could mean that this is a limited edition variant that could be limited to China. We’ll keep you posted as we’re expecting more leaks to start coming in.

Samsung Galaxy Note 20 to arrive with a 60Hz display

If you’ve been watching the show, you know I love the Galaxy Note, and the idea of a smaller Note with the smaller Note 10 was fantastic. Thing is, that was a smaller version with a few changes, and we’ve been covering how this year the larger version will be a dramatic boost, while the small one was still gonna be powerful and flat. Well, it looks like Samsung wants to butcher this variant. According to some new Ice Universe tweets, the regular Galaxy Note 20 will bring a Wide Frame with the flat screen we’re expecting but with FHD+ resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate which he calls a desperate specification. On another tweets he says that this Note 20 will be more like a Note 20 Lite as the specs are far from the Note 20 Ultra’s which could simply be the Plus variant. He also believes that this decision by Samsung is to make consumers aim for the more expensive Note 20+, which makes no logical sense in today’s economy.

Story of the day:

Is Apple going to rename iOS to iPhoneOS?

And finally, for the hottest news today, let’s talk iPhone 12, or should I say iOS 14.. Or should I even say that might not be the name any more. We’ve actually had a considerable amount of leaks for this year’s WWDC but, none of them concerning iOS. Well, Jon Prosser which has been relatively quiet about WWDC just chimed in, sort of. He recently tweeted out iPhone OS, hinting to Apple going back to the original naming scheme. If you think about it, it actually makes sense considering that now we have iPadOS, MacOS, WatchOS, TvOS, and the fact that if you know your history, you’ll know Apple had to license iOS to Cisco when they launched the original iPad 10 years ago. On the tweet, XDA’s Max Weinbach answered saying he got a random email from someone saying that they would be renaming iOS to iPhoneOS and the iPhone to the Apple Phone. Now, we seriously doubt that they will be changing the iPhone’s name considering it will still be called iPhoneOS after all. We’re also wondering if this might be the death of the iPod Touch which is pretty much the only other device using iOS now that the iPad moved on from it. It’s the reason why iOS was used back in the day Subscribe: http://bit.ly/pocketnowsub http://pocketnow.com Follow us: http://flipboard.com/@Pocketnow http://facebook.com/pocketnow http://twitter.com/pocketnow http://google.com/+pocketnow

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It seems that Google Chrome will reduce RAM usage with the latest Windows 10 updates

It is well known that Google Chrome takes up tons of RAM on most computers, even more, if they run on Windows. However, the latest Windows 10 update may have fixed that, or at least it tried to.

“Early internal testing results of devices on the May 2020 Update are showing a memory usage reduction of up to 27% when browsing with Microsoft Edge. Individual device performance will vary based upon configuration and usage, but the lower memory usage is expected to create a better experience.”

The Windows 10 May update introduces memory management improvements as “SegmentHeap,” which overall will reduce memory usage of Win32 apps. When implemented, it showed a memory reduction of up to 27 percent. However, implementing SegmentHeap in Chrome would require Google to build with the Windows 10.0.19041.0 (20-04) SDK, and it is “currently blocked on some mysterious build failures.”

Source 9to5Google

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Google introduces Sodar, an AR tool to help you with social distancing

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It goes without saying that social distancing is a lifesaver for you and those around you as well. But it is not always easy to determine if you are within the 2-meter safety radius while out running an errand. In comes Sodar, an AR tool that will utilize your phone’s camera to clearly demarcate the safe radius for you.

Sodar uses the smartphone camera as a distance measuring tool and the screen as a viewfinder to show you a radius of 2-meter around you. Technically speaking, Google’s solution employs WebXR to visualize a circle in the same way you see AR objects around you with your phone, somewhat like Pokemon Go.

However, Sodar currently works only on Android devices with the Chrome browser installed on them. Just visit the Sodar.WithGoogle.com website on your phone, tap on the launch button, and you’re good to go. I tried it on my phone and it works really well without any lags or stutters. Here’s how it looks in action:

Source: ExperimentsWithGoogle

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Chrome will remove demanding ads that drain battery, data and system resources

Chrome is arguably the fastest web browser, and also the most demanding one. Google is now trying to somewhat improve the latter by cracking down on ads that consume a disproportionately high amount of data, drain the battery life, and strain the system resources.

Google says it has found a small fraction of ads that exhibit such behavior, and to tackle the issue, Chrome will limit the resources used by an ad before users can interact with it. Once an ad reaches the limit, Chrome will remove it and will show an “Ad removed” message at that spot. Here’s how it looks:

Google is creating a limit of “4MB of network data or 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30 second period, or 60 seconds of total CPU usage” for ads on Chrome. Surprisingly, only 0.3% of ads go past this limit, but that small fraction of ads alone accounts for 27% of network data used by ads and 28% of all ad CPU usage.

Google says it will test the new ad behavior monitoring experiment over the next few months before implementing it in August.

Source: Chromium Blog

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Chrome is getting a tab grouping feature to make your browser life easier

I usually have 15-20 Chrome tabs open on my laptop (I’m confident that it’s not just me). And yes, it is quite a task in itself shuffling through all those tabs. Thankfully, Google is soon introducing a feature that will make life easier for all tab hoarders like me, and that trick is called tab grouping.

With tab grouping, users will be able to rearrange tabs in a labeled group that can also be color-coded for easier identification. After that, users can freely move the tabs and organize them accordingly in groups on the tab strip. And if labeling a tab group sounds boring, you can also use an emoji instead of words.

Chrome_Tab-Groups_In-Line-Image-v7.gif

Google says just like regular tabs, groups will also be saved and will re-open just the way you left them once you fire up Chrome browser again. Tab grouping will arrive on Chrome for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Chrome OS starting next week. But if you can’t wait and are feeling adventurous, try the latest build of Chrome Beta to experience tab grouping before other mortals.

Tab-Groups-Organization-Example_v1r1.gif

Source: Google Blog

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