The latest version of Google Chrome, version 100 has been released,
so I'm going to go over the most significant new features in it. And there's not a huge amount of
new features in each individual update, so it might not be what you're expecting. However,
I am going to go over some significant updates in recent versions as well that
you probably haven't been keeping track of but you'll probably still be interested to know.
So there'll probably be new features to you at least. And if you're not sure how
to update Google Chrome, it's super easy. You just click the menu at the top right,
go to help, and then About Google Chrome, and then it will automatically load any new updates.
It'll tell you it's updating, and then when it's ready, it'll just prompt you to relaunch.
And when you do, it will now be the new version. So let's get into these new changes. First of all,
there is a new icon for Google Chrome, though I wouldn't fault you for not noticing.
It's basically exactly the same, except maybe a little bit more saturated colors and
a little bit flatter. But other than that, it's kind of the same thing.
The next change is actually a feature removal, which is that the data saving "lite mode" on
mobile is dead, that's not a feature anymore. This was actually announced like over a month ago.
But basically, Google cited that now that data plans are pretty much
mostly unlimited or at least more data available, it's apparently not needed.
The next feature may seem small, but it's actually the one that I'm most excited about. And it is the
return of the clickable volume mute button in tabs, but it's actually behind a chrome flag. So
to enable it, you go to chrome://flags. Then just search for the one called enable Tab Audio Muting
and change that to enabled. What this does is normally Chrome, if there is audio playing on
a tab, it'll show a little audio icon so you can tell which one for example, just randomly started
playing video. So you can go into it and then stop the video or whatever. There used to be a feature
also as a flag where you could simply click the audio icon and it would mute that tab,
but they removed it for some dumb reason, but now they brought it back.
So that's one of the most convenient features I'm happy has made a return. I believe you could right
click to hit mute, but it was so much easier to just click the little icon. The final change I
thought was worth mentioning is more a behind the scenes thing. It's a multi screen API.
So now if you're using a web app that is able to maybe be advantaged by multiple screens,
it will now be able to do that, and automatically load an app on multiple screens.
Or maybe you'd be able to set it to automatically open and it can recognize there are screens and
take advantage of them. So those are really the main front-end new features
in Chrome 100. They don't usually add many features in each new update. Most of the
stuff is behind the scenes. They are updating stuff, but each new version doesn't add too much.
So what I'm instead going to do is go through like one front-end feature that you probably will
like to know about if you didn't before, of the last ten versions. And again,
they'll probably be new to you since they don't exactly advertise themselves too much,
but are still kind of useful. In Chrome 91, they added a feature to the Tab Search menu.
So if you didn't know this was actually a thing even before this, you click that
dropdown at the top, right, it would allow you to search your current tabs. But in 91
they added a Recently Closed Tab section. So instead of having to press Control+Shift+T to
reopen any tabs you accidentally closed and were trying to find from before,
this way you can simply look through the list and pick which one you want to open again. In Chrome
92, they added something called the Chrome Safety Check, and you can actually run this by going
into the search bar and typing in just "safety check" or "run safety check". And then it will
go through a check for stuff like whether you have any saved passwords that are in any data breaches,
so you know to change those. It'll tell you what safe browsing level you have on Chrome
enabled. It'll also check if you have any extensions that are potentially harmful,
which I believe just means that it'll check if any are installed not from
the Chrome Web Store. And there's even a thing that says Find Harmful Software,
which apparently is able to somehow check running processes
on your computer or at least some of them, and tell you if it notices any that are malicious.
So almost like some kind of browser based antivirus. I don't know how it works,
but it's kind of cool to know about. In Chrome 93 they added a new API that
makes it easy to get one time password SMS messages between your phone and your
computer. So this is a feature that actually has to be implemented by the website.
So it's not going to be an all of them. And how this works is basically
if you go to request an SMS code for two factor authentication on the website,
that will also go and have your phone retrieve that SMS message automatically
and then bring it over, or send it and sync it over to the browser on your desktop.
So it kind of talks between them, so you don't have to actually look at your phone to get the
text message. Chrome does that automatically. Also in 94, they added a new Sharing Hub. So
you might notice this next to the bookmarks star. You click that and there's a new dropdown
that has stuff like create a QR code or share or cast stuff like that.
This actually was a flag at the time of Chrome 94, but by now it's actually a built in feature that
you can use. In Chrome 95, they added a flag that allows you to save tab groups. However,
it definitely seems to be unfinished still, because if you enable this and hit Save Tab Group,
it doesn't really save anywhere so you can retrieve it.
So it doesn't really seem finished, but it's at least worth noting that it's something to
working on. In Chrome 96, this one is more behind the scenes, but you'll probably still notice it,
which is they added a cache for recently visited pages,
which means that it saves recently visited pages, or recently navigated ones,
so if you click the back button and forward button, it should now instantly be able to
bring those back up, instead of having to completely reload it every time. Chrome
97 added a feature that's pretty cool, that allows you to actually see the individual data
saved by each website. So you go to Settings and the Security and Privacy.
Then Site Settings and then click "view permissions and data stored across sites".
And here you can see how much temporary data or files or whatever, are stored by
each website in Chrome's, for example, file system they have that allows websites to save
files in Chrome's temporary files folder, and stuff like that.
So you can see how much stuff is taking up space there. Or if you wanted to for example,
just clear out the cache and temporary files for an individual website. You can do that too.
In Chrome 98, there wasn't really too much, although they did
change emojis from being a PNG based, image based, to a vector. Which means that they
should now be able to scale as big as you want it and they won't get blurry.
And then in Chrome 99, also not too much, although behind the scenes they added a new
handwriting API. So I guess if you're on a tablet, Chrome can now recognize
any handwriting or ink drawing you'd use. Like with Windows ink, it will be able to convert
that to text if you prefer to write it out somehow. So if you're using a tablet you know,
sometimes it could be annoying, it might be easier, just write it out with a pen.
So those are what I think are the most significant updates most people would be interested in for
Chrome and even the most recent versions of Chrome that you might not have known about. If you guys
enjoyed this video, definitely let me know down in the comments, especially if I missed anything.
Maybe there is a hidden feature that not many people saw, and we can mention that down there.
If you want to subscribe maybe go to my channel. Check out some other videos I have.
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If you guys want to keep watching, the next video I'd recommend is one where I was talking about
how Windows File Explorer is probably going to be getting tabs, finally after all this time.
So you can watch that and see how that works. So thanks to everyone
who has watched until this point, and I'll see you in the next video.