How's it going everyone, I'm ThioJoe, and today we're going to take a look at 11 settings
in Google Chrome that you should probably change.
These may be things you'll want to disable, or cool stuff that is disabled by default,
that you will want to enable.
Now, I'm using version 63 of Chrome, which is actually the current beta version, so if
you're watching this video at a later date, or you're not using the beta version, things
may look a bit different, so don't be surprised at that.
I think you'll find these interesting, and also be sure to subscribe for more videos
like this, and enable notifications by clicking the bell, or YouTube is not going to show
you my new videos even if you do subscribe, because the YouTube algorithm is a steaming
dumpster fire.
Anyway, let's get started.
To start off, we have a feature that last I checked is enabled by default that you probably
want to disable.
So go to settings, click advanced, then under system look for the option called "Continue
running background apps when Google Chrome is closed."
I don't know about you, but when I close Google chrome, I expect it to actually close, and
not have apps keep running in the background I don't know about.
I mean really, what browser apps do I want to keep running, if I'm not even using the
browser?
So yea, I'd disable that if I were you and save some system resources.
Ok, number two, this one is also in the settings page, but this time under Privacy and Security.
Look for the setting that says "Automatically send some system information and page content
to Google to help detect dangerous apps and sites".
This one is disabled by default, but me personally, I think it's worth it to actually enable it.
If you're very privacy conscious you don't have to, but there are so many malicious websites
out there that if more people enable this setting, it'll end up benefitting yourself
in the future.
Plus, it may make it more likely Chrome will detect a new malicious site you go on even
if it hasn't scanned it before.
Alright now all the rest of the settings we're going to go over are actually in a hidden
settings menu called the Chrome Flags menu.
Getting there is really simple, you just go to the URL bar and type in Chrome://Flags,
and hit enter.
It will warn you these are experimental features, so it's best to not go randomly enabling and
disabling features without knowing what they do.
Again this menu might have a different design based on your version of chrome, but the functionality
is the same.
So let's move on.
So for number 3, do a search for a setting called "Show Saved Copy Button".
You can either search for it at the top, or hit Control + F and type it in there.
What this does, is will allow you to load a cached version of a website, if that website
either fails to load, or you are currently offline.
So to enable it, go to the dropdown and select "primary.
That way, you can at least look at a previous version of the website even if it's not live,
which might still be helpful.
With this enabled, on the failed to load page, you'll see a button to load the saved copy.
If you're wondering what the secondary option means, it just changes whether the Load copy
button is on the left or right, so it doesn't really matter.
Next number 4, this one is really great, it's called "Parallel Downloading".
So search for that one and turn it to enabled.
This will let chrome use multiple download threads to speed up the downloading of a file.
This means if a website has a limit for how fast you can download a file, chrome can basically
download multiple parts of that file in parallel, so you can cut the download speed to a fraction.
There's not really much documentation on this feature so I'm not sure how well it works,
and if it does it every time, but I don't see a reason to not enable it unless you start
having issues or something.
By the way, there are extensions that can do this as well, I'm not going to get into
those because it's beyond the scope of this video, but you can look those up.
Hopefully this feature will make those obsolete and just work as well without any extensions.
Moving on, for number 5, look for a setting called "Smooth Scrolling", which is on be
default.
This is a personal preference, but I really hate smooth scrolling so I disabled it.
It just changes the way it feels to scroll on a page, and makes it seem a lot slower
and sluggish.
You can turn it off and on to compare for yourself, but I find when smooth scrolling
is disabled, scrolling with the mousewheel just feels so much more responsive and instant,
whereas there seems to be a bit of a delay otherwise.
That's because to smooth out the scroll movement, it has to slowly build up speed, then slow
down to a halt.
It's not something you would really notice until you compare it for yourself, so try
it out and see.
Number 6, this one is really cool, look for the setting called "New omnibox answers in
suggest types" and enable that.
This makes it so you can type questions and other queries into the omnibox or URL bar,
and it can offer answers right there.
For example, if I type in "2nd president of the USA", it will give me the answer John
Adams right in the auto-complete dropdown, instead of having to do a search for it.
The only problem is, it actually really sucks at working half the time, and you can type
something in one time, and it will answer, and if you type it in again two seconds later,
it won't.
So it's definitely hit or miss, but I guess not bad to have enabled anyway, and you can
always just hit enter to do a google search which will show you the same information.
Ok number 7, I really like this one, it also has to do with the omnibox.
It's a setting called "Omnibox UI Show Suggestion Favicons", that you can enable.
What this does, is when you type something into the URL bar, and it lists the suggestions,
it will now show the favicon, or the site icon next to each result.
So this is really great if you're searching for a website you visited previously, and
the results are from a bunch of different sites, you can more quickly identify results
from the site you're looking for by the icon.
Plus I think it just looks nicer, because before it would just show little icons that
didn't mean anything, and it was sometimes hard to sift through the results.
This is definitely one of my favorites I'd say.
Number 8, this one is something you may or may not want to enable, called "Automatic
tab discarding".
What this will do, is if you have a lot of chrome tabs open, and your computer starts
to run low on memory, it will stop running some tabs you haven't been using.
This way, those tabs are no longer using up resources in the background.
And if you do want to go back to it, Chrome will simply reload the page when you click
on the tab again.
The only downside I can see is if you have tabs running in the background that are actually
doing something, I don't know, like a game or something, you don't want that to close,
because if you refresh it will mess things up.
So you can decide youreslf whether to enable this, based on if your computer runs out of
memory a lot, or if you use a ton of tabs, and what you usually have running in those
tabs.
Onto number 9, this is seriously one of my favorite features that as far as I know is
not enabled by default for some reason.
It's called "Tab audio muting UI control", and makes it really easy to mute annoying
tabs that are playing sounds.
When something is playing sound in a tab, chrome by default will tell you which tab
it is using a little speaker icon.
To mute that tab, you can normally right click it and hit "mute tab".
But if you enable this feature, you can mute the tab simply by clicking on the little speaker
icon.
Sure, it only saves you one click, but it's so simple that it's a no brainer.
Alright coming near the end, number 10 is called "Fast tab/window close".
This is another one I like to have enabled.
Normally when you go to close a tab, Chrome will stop any javascript applets running or
anything else, and once that's all stopped, will close the tab.
But sometimes that might take a second, which will seem like a delay when you're closing
tabs, and can get annoying if you have to close a bunch of tabs at once.
With this, according to the limited documentation, Chrome will immediately close the tab visually,
then shut down anything running from that tab in the background.
I like this because if I close a tab, I want it to just disappear because it's taking up
space, I don't care if Chrome has to take an extra second for it to close it in the
background.
So this is nice.
And finally number 11, this feature is really amazing to enable, called "Scroll Anchoring".
Now it does technically work on desktop I guess, but if you're on Android, you can also
enable this, and that's where it really shines.
Basically, scroll anchoring can help prevent the page from jumping whenever you go on a
site, and it keeps loading new stuff.
For example, how many times have you gone to a site, and you start reading it on your
phone, and the STUPID FREAKIN ads start loading, and pushing everything out of the way, SO
obnoxious.
When scroll anchoring is working, you won't actually notice, because it simply stops the
page from doing that.
But over time I'm sure you'll start to take note that it happens less and less often.
And I guess this does happen on desktop every once in a while too, just less often, but
still worth it to keep enabled.
So, that's everything hope you enjoyed it.
If you want to keep watching I'll put some other videos right here you can watch, and
on my channel I've got a ton of other Chrome related videos you can check out.
Be sure to let me know down in the comments if I missed anything, and if you want to subscribe
I make new videos every tuesday thursday saturday.
And again consider enabling notifications by clicking that bell.
Looking forward to hearing from you guys, so thanks for watching I'll see you next time,
have a good one.