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Test experimental features in Chrome

You can test features before they’re added to Chrome and give feedback.

Turn features on or off

To use experimental features, download Chrome Beta .

• Open Chrome.

• Restart your browser.

Give feedback on features

If you test any features, you can give feedback about:

• Your experience with the feature
• Issues or problems
• Suggested improvements

To give feedback:

• Next to the feature's name and description, select Send feedback .

To send general feedback about Chrome, learn more about how to report an issue or send feedback in Chrome .

Related resource

• Try experiments in Search Labs

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Quickly generate custom themes based on the subject, mood, visual style, and color of your choosing. To get started, simply visit the Customize Chrome side panel, click Change theme , and then Create with AI .

Meet the next generation of AI in Chrome

AI is already used across Chrome in performance, productivity, accessibility, privacy, and security. Now generative AI features will make it even easier and more efficient to browse — all while keeping your experience personalized to you.

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Search what you see..

Search and ask questions about what you see with Google Lens in Chrome across your devices. On desktop, you can now select anything on a page to search it, like text in a video or an item in an image. You'll get answers right in your tab, and, depending on your search, you might get an AI Overview response.

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Type @Gemini in the desktop address bar, write a prompt, and get your response on gemini.google.com. You can get help with creative and complex tasks, like planning a trip or learning more about a new topic.

Help me write

Write with confidence.

We’ve made it easier to put your thoughts into words, whether you want to leave a well-written review, craft a friendly RSVP, or make an inquiry about an apartment rental. To get started, right-click a text box in Chrome and select Help me write .

Tab organizer

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Tab groups are helpful, if you create them. With Tab organizer, Chrome can automatically suggest and create groups from your open tabs. Just right-click on a tab and select Organize Similar Tabs or click the drop-down arrow to the side of your tabs.

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How to use Google Chrome Flags to enable experimental features

Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers work out of the box for the most part. All versions of Google Chrome come with support for "Chrome flags", which unlocks a treasure trove of features, many of which are considered beta or experimental.

Google uses different Chrome editions for development purposes, including Chrome Canary and Beta. Some features are introduced as flags, and users need to enable them to make them work in the browser. While it is often not recommended to do so, especially in work environments, it may sometimes unlock useful features that would not be available for weeks or months otherwise.

Many features of Chrome's flag page are integrated natively in the browser at one point in development, but it may also happen that some are removed without further notice.

How to access Chrome Flags

All users may access experimental flags in Chrome. All that is required for that is to type chrome://flags in the browser to get started.

Google Chrome displays a warning at the top and the list of flags below that on the page. The list begins with flags that are user-enabled, and then the remaining flags. The unavailable tab lists flags that are not available, e.g. because they are not supported on a platform or setup.

Each flag is listed with its name, a short description, platform availability, and status. There is also a handy link to jump to that flag right away in the browser.

Title and description are often enough to figure out what a particular flag does. Sometimes, you may need to run a search for the name of a feature to find out more before changing its status.

An example: If you load chrome://flags/#enable-tab-search in Chrome, the Tab Search experiment is displayed. You may select the box on the right to change the status of the flag to Enabled or Disabled. Changes require a restart of the browser before they take effect. Chrome will display a relaunch button

You may encounter different statuses when you work with the chrome://flags page. The most common ones are:

• Default -- this is the default value as set by Google. Its value can be Enabled or Disabled, or it may have another value.
• Enabled -- the experimental Chrome flag is enabled.
• Disabled -- the flag is disabled in the browser.

Closing Words

Chrome Flags opens a world of configuration options. You may use them to enable features that are not ready for inclusion in Chrome Stable, or disable features that Google is testing currently.

Ultimately, it is not as great of a configuration tool as Firefox's about:config page, but it gives Chrome users temporary control over some features of the browser.

All other Chromium-based browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi, support flags as well. You may open them using  a different address, e.g. edge://flags instead of chrome://flags in Microsoft Edge, but the available experiments are mostly the same.

Now You : do you tweak flags in your browser?

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How to stop automatic google chrome updates on windows, google will disable classic extensions in chrome in the coming months.

Developers need to get this page in order! Too many flags have accumulated there … IMHO.

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Chrome Flags: What are they and how to enable them

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Why use Chrome Flags?

There are two main reasons that you would want to enable a flag or flags in Chrome. For the curious types, like myself, enabling flags can gain you access to new, cutting-edge features that aren’t readily available in Chrome or ChromeOS. Here’s a great example. Did you know that once upon a time, Picture in Picture wasn’t a thing in Chrome or Chromium-based browsers like Edge , Vivaldi , Brave , and many others? That’s right. What may seem like a simple, must-have feature like PiP once began its life as an experimental Chrome extension . From there, it was added to the experimental chrome://flags page where it was tested thoroughly.

How to enable Chrome flags

So, you’ve decided to do a little experimenting of your own and you need to know where to start. Well, you’re in luck because I am here to guide your way. To get started using Chrome flags, you will need to first open Chrome on your PC or ChromeOS device. There, that was easy enough. Right? Next, you need to point your browser to the Chrome flags page. For desktop Chrome and ChromeOS, simply type or paste chrome://flags into your URL bar, a.k.a. Omnibox. If you’re using a ChromeOS device, pressing enter here should pop up a PWA that houses all of your available Chrome flags. On desktop, the flags page should open directly in the Chrome browser.

WARNING: EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES AHEAD! By enabling these features, you could lose browser data or compromise your security or privacy. Enabled features apply to all users of this browser. If you are an enterprise admin you should not be using these flags in production. chrome://flags

How to enable Chrome Flags Open Chrome Go to chrome://flags Search for the flag you want Flip drop-down to “enabled” Relaunch Chrome

The flags available to you will vary between Chrome and ChromeOS and will also look different depending on which version of Chrome you have. I stay in the Canary channel most of the time and therefore, see new flags weeks before stable builds of Chrome. My advice to you, if you are daring, is to fiddle around with different flags and see what you discover. Some flags are fairly self-explanatory while others are quite cryptic. You never know what they may actually do until you give them a try.

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Chrome’s new AI feature can help you write on the web

Feb 22, 2024

[[read-time]] min read

You can now turn on “Help me write,” a new experimental AI feature in Chrome that can help you write content online.

Last month, we announced new generative AI features coming to Chrome to make browsing the web easier and more personalized — including a tab organizer, theme generator and an experimental tool to help you confidently write content online.

With this week’s launch of Chrome M122, you can try out “ Help me write ” on Mac and Windows PCs starting in the U.S in English. Using Gemini models, the new feature will help you start writing or refine something you’ve already written — whether you’re selling a piece of furniture, submitting a restaurant review or inquiring about a hotel reservation. The tool will understand the context of the webpage you’re on to suggest relevant content. For example, as an avid gardener, if I’m writing a review for garden shears, Chrome will pull out relevant details about the item from the page to support my recommendation so it’s more valuable to other hobbyists.

Use "Help me write" for everyday writing tasks, like inquiring about a hotel reservation.

To turn on this feature, sign into Chrome, select “Settings” from the three-dot menu and navigate to the “ Experimental AI ” page. There, you’ll see the option to enable “Help me write” (you can disable it at any time). Once you enable it, you’re all set: Just right-click on an open text field within Chrome and select "Help me write" to get started.

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Here are 12 Chrome Flags that will improve your web-browsing experience

Published on March 12, 2024

Chrome is known for its simplicity and speed. Despite this, there are a lot of extra tools under the hood. This includes several experimental features that can be accessed through special Chrome Flags.

Considering these are all test features that might not even make it to the stable version of Chrome, bugs are expected. Nonetheless, if you are willing to go through the occasional hiccup, some enable an improved browsing experience. Let’s take a look at some of our favorites.

What is a Chrome Flag?

Chrome Flags are experimental features Google hasn’t released yet, but you can access and try. Just remember these aren’t ready for an official release just yet. This means they may not work very well all of the time. You may encounter the occasional hiccup, bug, or crash.

How do you access Chrome Flags settings?

No matter how much you dig into menus and options, you won’t find them in the settings unless you know how to access this section. You need to know your way in!

How to access the Chrome Flags page:

• Open Chrome .
• Click on the address and delete any URL that might be in it.
• Type the following in the address bar: “chrome://flags/” (without quotation marks).
• Press Enter .
• You are in!

By the way, these steps work both on mobile and desktop. That said, not all Chrome Flags are available for all platforms. There are two primary tabs on the page: Available and Unavailable. Some of these experimental features are only available on specific devices. You can’t use features made for Android on devices like a laptop, for example.

How to enable a Chrome Flag:

• Once you find yourself within the page, go ahead and search for the Chrome Flag you want to try out.
• Select the drop-down menu under the Flag you want to use. It usually reads either Default or Disabled .
• Select Enabled .
• You’ll need to relaunch Chrome most of the time. Hit Relaunc h if the option shows up.

Note: These instructions were assembled using a Google Pixel 7 running Android 14. These steps are identical across all Chrome browsers, though. The same steps will work on desktop and iOS.

Are Chrome Flags safe?

Once in the Chrome Flags settings, you will see a warning message telling you about the dangers of using them. This is because experimental features can cause issues and hiccups in the browser. They are usually not too unstable, but some can be. Regardless, you can easily disable them.

How to disable Chrome Flags:

• Access the Chrome Flags settings as directed in the previous section.
• Find the experimental Chrome Flag you want to disable.
• Select the drop-down menu and select Disabled .
• Alternatively, you can press the button in the top-right corner that says Reset all to deactivate all of them.
• You’ll need to relaunch Chrome most of the time. Hit Relaunch if the option shows up.

The best Chrome Flags

Smooth scrolling, touch ui layout.

• QUIC Protocol
• Zero-copy rasterizer
• Force Dark Mode
• Parallel Downloading

Show autofill predictions

Live caption.

• GPU rasterization

Chrome Refresh 2023

Override software rendering list, partial swap.

Editor’s note: We’ll regularly update this list with new Chrome Flags. All instructions moving forward were put together using a custom PC running Windows 11 and Chrome version 122.0.6261.129, unless otherwise specified.

Ever notice your scrolling stutter or that it can get a bit sluggish? There could be many reasons it’s happening, but this Chrome Flag will likely improve the situation. Search for “Smooth Scrolling” in the search bar and enable the feature. It’s a great feature Android users should enable, but you can also use it on Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS.

Many convertible laptops, Windows tablets, and other devices now come with capable touch screens. This makes it possible to interact with content more naturally. Sometimes, the desktop interface doesn’t work well with touch commands, though. The browser has a touch-optimized UI hidden in the Chrome Flags.

In the search bar, search for “Touch UI Layout.” Click on the drop-down menu next to it and select Enabled .

Experimental QUIC Protocol

Certain Chrome Flags speed up your browsing experience. QUIC is Google’s protocol, and it’s designed to make the web faster. Enabling this one will speed things up, but only when websites have been optimized for it. Something is better than nothing, though!

On the main page, search for “Experimental QUIC Protocol.” Click on the drop-down menu next to it and select Enabled .

Enable Zero-copy rasterizer

If you want Chrome’s general performance to be faster, one neat trick is to enable Zero-copy rasterizer. This will allow Chrome threads to write directly to the GPU for tile management. In turn, Chrome should operate faster, at least theoretically. Whether you’ll actually notice a difference is another story. Also, it makes Chrome more prone to crashes. You can definitely give it a try, though.

Search for “Zero-copy rasterizer” and enable it in the drop-down Chrome Flags menu.

Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents

Dark Mode is pretty cool, both aesthetically and for eye comfort reasons . If you are also a fan of it, you want all website content to support it. Sadly, not all websites cooperate, but a secondary option forces the option on all websites.

Open the Chrome Flags page and search for “Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents.” Enable the feature through the drop-down menu next to it.

Parallel Downloading Chrome Flag

Waiting for large files to download can be a hassle. Let’s cut delays by dividing downloads into multiple files to be downloaded simultaneously.

Search for “Parallel Downloading” and enable the feature using the drop-down menu to the right.

Nobody likes filling out forms, so Google simplifies this process using autofill. Still annoying? You can automatically have Chrome autofill form information by enabling the “Show autofill predictions” feature.

Search for “Show Autofill Predictions” and enable the feature using the drop-down menu to the right.

Some video players and websites offer captions, but this isn’t a universal feature. Those who want transcripts for all recognized words in media can use the Live Caption Chrome Flag.

Search for “Live Caption” and enable it.

GPU Rasterization

Is Chrome simply not fast enough for you? We know how you can harness the full power of your computer to speed things up. There’s a trick, though; you need to have a dedicated GPU for this one to make any improvements to Chrome’s performance. GPU Rasterization allows Chrome to take some of the workload off the CPU and have your GPU take care of it.

Here’s how to do it. Search for “GPU rasterization” and enable the feature using the drop-down menu.

Chrome is starting to look a bit outdated, right? Everything is kind of square and dull. If you want a more modern design, go into the Chrome Flags and enable “Chrome Refresh 2023.” The new design hasn’t been pushed out to all users, but Google has been working on it. It resembles Material You, with more colorful and playful hues and rounded corners. Additionally, it will feel better on touchscreen devices, as Material You is a mobile-focused design language.

GPU acceleration on Chrome is usually only available for supported devices. But, of course, there is a Chrome Flag for nearly everything. You can force Chrome to use GPU acceleration, even on unsupported devices. Just be warned that this may cause compatibility issues, as systems are often not supported for a reason.

Just look for “Override software rendering list” and enable the Chrome Flag.

Partial Swap improves memory management, and can supercharge your browser’s performance. It basically swaps memory usage, prioritizing tabs and tasks you are using at the moment. The thing is, this can also cause issues from time to time.

Partial swap comes enabled by default, so search for “Partial swap” to disable it. Or, if it’s disabled, you can try to enable it and see if it helps.

Using Chrome Flags is safe, but it can make your experience a bit buggy. The team also warns you could lose data and compromise privacy. This is just Google being careful, though. The worst that can usually happen is that you’ll need to relaunch Chrome and turn off the Chrome Flags, if anything goes wrong.

Chrome Flags are experimental features the Google team is testing. The team will make these official Chrome features once they are in good working order, if they are deemed worthy. This isn’t always the case, though. Additionally, Chrome Flags are often killed.

You can use Chrome Flags on both mobile and desktop browsers, but not all Chrome lags are available on every device. Some are desktop or mobile-specific. However, Chrome will separate unavailable Flags and put them into the Unavailable tab.

We review products independently , but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use .

How to Enhance Chrome With Google's Experimental 'Flags'

Looking to enable better browsing speed up chrome google chrome lets you enable experimental features called flags. here are the 10 best google chrome flags to try..

Google Chrome offers an array of settings and tools that you can customize and control. But beyond the obvious options , you can venture even deeper through something known as Chrome flags.

Flags are experimental features you can enable to potentially enhance the privacy, security, usability, speed, or overall performance of the browser. Aimed at developers and advanced users, flags usually point to features that Google is testing to see how they behave before deciding whether or not to officially add them to the browser.

How to Access Chrome Flags

You can access Chrome flags in the browser across all the supported platforms—Chrome for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, and Chrome OS. To view available flags in Chrome on any of these platforms, type chrome://flags in the address field. The section for Available displays all the flags supported by your current platform; Unavailable shows the flags not supported by your system.

Scroll through the list of available flags or you can look for a specific flag by name or description. In the Search flags field at the top, type the words you want to find in the name or description. Results will populate in real time, allowing you to quickly find a flag.

How to Enable a Chrome Flag

You will notice that most of the flags are disabled, which means they are not active. Sometimes a flag may be enabled if Google deems it sufficiently stable. Some flags may be set to default, which means it may be enabled or disabled.

To manually change a flag's status, click the button and set it to Enabled or Disabled. If you manually change a flag's status, the Enabled/Disabled button turns blue, and a blue circle appears in front of the flag's name. You're then prompted to restart Chrome for the change to take effect.

The Best Chrome Flags (And a Word of Caution)

Before enabling anything, proceed with caution. Flags are experimental, and though some will improve Chrome, others could do more harm than good. That's why you never want to enable a bunch of flags in one shot. The best strategy is to read the description of a flag that intrigues you and research it to find out how it works.

If you want to try one, enable that single flag. Restart Chrome and make sure the browser is behaving itself. If you bump into any problems, go back to the flags page and disable the troublesome feature you enabled, which you'll now find at the top of the list. If you need to reset all the ones you may have changed, click the button at the top to Reset all to default.

Now, let's check out 10 top flags for Chrome users. You can find these by browsing the list of flags or more easily by searching the flag's full name.

Filesystem API in Incognito

Parallel Downloading

Top Sites from Site Engagement

Smooth Scrolling

Scroll Anchor Serialization

Automatic Tab Discarding

New History Entries Require a User Gesture

Here's another common problem on the web. You're at a certain page on a website and click the Back button in the browser expecting to return to the previous page. Instead, you remain stuck at the same page and have to click Back several times to get to the prior page.

This happens because some websites sneakily put dummy entries into Chrome's History list to keep you on the same page. Enabling a flag named New History Entries Require a User Gesture will prevent sites from inserting these dummy pages without your approval.

Offline Auto-Reload Mode

The Best Chrome Extensions for Online Safety

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Home Web How To Enable And Use Chrome Experimental Features

How To Enable And Use Chrome Experimental Features

We’re all familiar with Google Chrome. It’s one of the most popular browsers on the ‘net and easily one of the best (aside from a few small complaints). Depending on how long you’ve used Chrome, you probably know it like the back of your hand. However, there’s one thing that you might not be familiar with, as it’s not necessarily “easy” to access — Chrome’s built-in experimental features.

Google has actually integrated a ton of experimental features into Chrome which bring, well, some experimental features to the forefront you can use. They can make Chrome more efficient, add new features, and so on. Follow along below, and we’ll show you how to get things setup.

Should you use experimental Chrome features?

So, the question is, should you actually use the experimental features found in Google Chrome? There really isn’t any harm in it — your PC will always be fine, but you may lose your data. Again, they are “experimental” features, meaning they could be buggy or slow down your browser, and possibly delete everything you have — accounts, bookmarks, history, important plugins, folders, etc). That’s not always the case — a lot of the times a buggy experimental feature can easily be fixed. If things start to appear like they’re dragging, it’s (most of the time) as easy as going back into the experimental features section and turning the feature off that is causing the problem. So, as long as you’re willing to tinker around with the features and can risk losing the data in your browser, there’s not too much harm in turning experimental features on.

What about browser backups?

If you want to take experimental features for a spin, but don’t want to take the risk of losing any data, that can easily be resolved by backing up your data with Google’s servers. It’s as easy as logging into Chrome with your Google account (usually found under Settings) and enabling “Sync Everything.” This will sync all of your Google Chrome data (and Chrome OS) with Google’s servers. That way, it’s easily retrievable, allowing you to easily restore your browser to your original settings.

You can find “Sync Everything” under Settings > Sync Settings, as pictured above. Make sure that you have the “Sync Everything” slider turned on. It’ll look blue if it’s enabled, or gray if it’s disabled.

To restore to your original settings, it’s as easy as logging into Chrome again. So, if you turn on an experimental feature, it breaks Chrome, and you have to reinstall, it’s as easy as going back into Settings and logging into your Google account. This will restore your Chrome backup.

Some other general information

One thing to remember before you start using experimental features is that they can be taken away in the blink of an eye — these are features that Google is testing for consumer use in Chrome and Chrome OS. If Google decides that one feature just isn’t working the way they wanted to, you could see it disappear from the list of experimental features available to you. Likewise, you’ll also periodically see new experimental features become available in that list to try.

It’s also worth noting that  a lot  of these experimental features are back-end features, meaning they work to make the overall user experience faster and more efficient. So, you won’t always see features that you can physically use, but that you can turn on for a more overall seamless Chrome experience.

With all of that out of the way, let’s get started!

How to enable experimental features in Chrome

Google’s experimental features are easy to access. Whether you’re running Chrome OS or Google Chrome, it’s as easy as opening the browser and entering  chrome://flags  into the address bar and pressing “Enter.” You should arrive at a page similar to the one shown above.

There’s no specific button you have to press — it’s as simple as going through the list of experimental features, reading what they do, and pressing the “Enable” or “Disable” button, depending on what you want to do with that specific feature.

What experimental features to use

There are a ton of experimental features that you can take for a spin, although some of the descriptions might sound a little confusing as to what they do. We’ve broken down a small sampling of the features below to show you what they do, giving you a better idea of what you’re tinkering around with.

#ignore-gpu-blacklist

This is a software rendering feature that aims to enable GPU acceleration on unsupported configurations. So, it’ll override Chrome’s built-in software rendering list, and instead use your hardware to provide a more overall seamless experience. Obviously this is a back-end feature, trying to increase the overall performance of Chrome; however, right now it appears that it’s a hit or miss with the hardware acceleration being unavailable in many cases.

#enable-scroll-prediction

This is another neat rendering feature to make your Chrome experience a little more seamless. Basically, it predicts where your finger is going to be next so that it can render that portion of the page before you actually arrive there — that way, when you’re ready to view that portion of content, there should be little to know waiting for something to load or “render.”

#smooth-scrolling

Smooth scrolling, so far, is probably the coolest feature. This helps the user smoothly scroll from the top to the bottom of a web page in Chrome, even when your system might be bogging down or struggling to free up resources (i.e. in the case of a full hard drive or lack of memory).

#ash-enable-night-light

We’ve told you before about programs that’ll help you work in the dark, making the screen emit a “warmer” light at night to make things easier on the eyes. One of the features Google is working on for Chrome (for all support operating systems) is something called Night Light, which operates similarly to programs like f.lux. With it enabled, you’ll be able to control the temperature of the screen within Chrome.

#quick-unlock-fingerprint

If you have a Chromebook, this is a neat feature. It’ll allow you to unlock your Chromebook with a fingerprint on the lock screen. Alternatively, there’s another experimental feature that uses a PIN to unlock it.

#print-pdf-as-image

This is another super handy experimental feature that’ll hopefully make it into a full update. It does just as it says, allowing you to print a PDF as an image in Print Preview. This is handy, as sometimes it’s just easier to print a PDF as an image, and some printers out there won’t let you print PDFs, but they will let you print images. This makes that conversion process a little easier. This experimental feature is available in the Chrome browser for all operating systems as well as Chrome OS.

#enable-tablet-splitview

Finally, the last feature we’ll highlight is Split View. This is Chrome OS-specific, allowing you to play or tinker around with using two apps at once in a split view. Again, it’s experimental — a little buggy in our testing — but could be a cool feature for a final update to increase multitasking capabilities.

There’s plenty more experimental features available in Chrome. As a reminder, type in  Chrome://flags  in the address bar to check them out for yourself.

What about the beta channel?

Maybe you don’t want to mess around with experimental features, risking all of your browser data. Or maybe you don’t want to deal with a possible corrupted Chrome client, having to uninstall and reinstall again. But, you still want to tinker with all of the new goodies. Luckily, you can still do that without risking the integrity of your main client — instead, you can download the beta channel.

Google Chrome Beta is a separate client, allowing you to take all of the latest up and coming Chrome features for a test drive. You’ll be able to provide direct feedback to Google on those features as well. It’s honestly the best way to test Chrome’s new features, instead of putting your daily browser at risk.

You can download it for free from Google over at www.google.com/chrome/browser/beta .

And that’s all there is to it! If you like to tinker with new software, Chrome’s experimental features are a great place to start. There’s little risk of “losing all your data,” if you have it backed up and synced into your Google account. And even if you don’t want to mess with these features in the main Chrome client, you can always go and download the Chrome Beta Channel as a separate client, allowing you to still tinker with the new features and enhancements coming down the pipeline.

And keep in mind, Chrome isn’t the only browser you can tinker with, plenty other mainstream browsers off beta features you can mess with as well — Firefox , Opera , Vivaldi, etc.

If you have any feedback or need help getting an experimental feature going, be sure to leave us a comment in the comments section below!

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Everything you need to know about Chrome's flags

WARNING: Experimental Features Ahead!

One of the cool things about Chrome is that we're able to play with experimental features. That means we can install beta or even alpha versions, but we can also try some of the truly experimental things that haven't been included on even the most alpha of alpha builds through what are called "flags."

Let's have a look at what they are, and how to get started breaking things.

What are Chrome Flags?

Flags are experimental features, as well as features most users will not need that are buried in a place where they won't be accidentally enabled.

Some are features Google is working on implementing, some are just things being tested to know if it even should work on making a stable feature, and some are there because some obscure use case means there needs to be a way to do a thing.

Experimental things are cool when they are cool, but not so much when they aren't.

Flags can improve your experience using Chrome or make it worse — that's how things go with anything still in its experimental phase. They can also let you have access to content that you wouldn't normally be able to see or use, like VR websites or features in other Google products like YouTube that aren't quite yet ready for the general public.

They can also change the way Chrome itself runs by changing settings for hardware acceleration or memory management, which can lead to problems. These problems can be simple and solved by reverting a setting, or made significantly worse. I've never heard of someone ruining a computer by changing a Flag, but there's a first time for everything, so you need to be careful.

Most people probably aren't interested in changing any Chrome Flags, and that's probably for the best. But if you're the type who can't leave well enough alone, Chrome has you covered.

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How to access Chrome's Flags

To change any Flags , you need to know where they are. They aren't exactly out in the open, but thankfully they also aren't hard to uncover. Whether you are using one of the best Chromebooks , Chrome on another computer, or even Chrome on your phone, you get to them the same way.

• In the Omnibox (Chrome's address bar) on a blank tab, type the following: chrome://flags/

You'll be greeted with a message warning you that these can be experimental settings, and that things can go horribly wrong. It's true — you can make Chrome unusable if you change the wrong thing, and you can do worse things, too. This is more than Google covering themselves in case you break something, and it's a warning you should pay attention to.

At the top of the page, you'll see a search box where you can look for a specific Flag that someone or a website might have told you about. Google is pretty good at search.

You'll also see a list of the Flags themselves. Each entry has a short description of what the setting changes, a button to enable or disable the Flag, and a hyperlink so that you can get to that flag through the Omnibox without searching. Such as chrome://flags/#enable-parallel-downloading which takes you to the Flag that makes it so Chrome will download multiple files at the same time as opposed to just one by one. This is a good example of a Flag that won't harm anything if you want to try it.

There's always a way to go back unless you change a Flag that takes the reset button away.

To change a Flag, click or tap the button in its listing. You'll see three choices: Default, Enable and Disable. Enable and Disable are simple enough to understand, but Default may throw you. it simply means that you want the setting to go back to whatever it was before you started changing things. it's handy because it means you don't have to remember if you enabled it or disabled it.

The most important button is at the very top of the page next to the search box: Reset all to default. That's your get-out-of-jail-free card, and as long as you can still start Chrome and get to it, you'll be able to go back to where you were before you broke anything.

Some helpful flags to try out

You might have landed on this page with the hope of seeing what different flags you should try. As we've reiterated throughout this post, not all flags are the same, and unless you know what you're doing, you might want to just avoid messing with them altogether. 

But we've compiled a list of some flags that could help improve your Chrome browsing experience. Just as a reminder, while you can access Chrome Flags from a Chromebook, the best Android phones , or the Chrome browser on your computer, it doesn't mean that enabling a flag will actually work. It's also important to know that some flags you see mentioned online aren't available, while others are limited to the version of Chrome you are using (stable, beta, dev, canary). 

• chrome://flags#enable-parallel-downloading - Enable parallel downloading to accelerate download speed.
• chrome://flags/#show-autofill-type-predictions - Annotates web forms with Autofill field type predictions as placeholder text.
• chrome://flags/#enable-gpu-rasterization - Use GPU to rasterize web content.
• chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode - Allows viewing of simplified web pages by selecting 'Customize and control Chrome'>'Distill page'.
• chrome://flags/#smooth-scrolling - Animate smoothly when scrolling page content.

While it's possible to go through and enable a bunch of flags at the same time before hitting the Relaunch button, we don't recommend doing so. Instead, make sure you hit the button after enabling each flag, just to ensure that Chrome loads properly and the feature you enabled actually works. Otherwise, you could end up with a broken experience until you go through and reset everything.

Should you change any Flags?

Ahh. That's the meat of it all, isn't it? These experimental things are right there, and we get to try them as we please, knowing the risks involved. As long as you understand those risks — you could lose browser data or compromise your security or privacy — there's nothing wrong with trying things.

You'll see tips about changing Flags online whenever someone finds a good one, but you probably shouldn't just start jamming on buttons just because you can. An example of a Flag you might have heard about was the QUIC Flag — chrome://flags/#enable-quic . QUIC is Google's experimental protocol, and it stands for Quick UDP Internet Connection .

Its goal is to provide secure web browsing faster than the existing TLS/SSL protocols and in some ways, it's pretty good. One way that it isn't so good is that most Mitmproxy servers are unable to filter websites that serve you pages using QUIC. If you need to use a mitmproxy (you would know if you did) you can disable the QUIC Flag so it's never used and every site serves you using TSL/SSL.

Never change a Flag for something you don't understand. Trust me, because I push buttons before I read them.

Of course, there are a lot of other Flags that can make everything worse, which are the ones you need to look out for. I'm not going to start talking about the ones I've tried and made everything worse other than to say Web Assembly Flags will break your browser, and NaCI plugin Flags are things you should know what they are before you just press buttons. Trust a person who just pushed buttons and was sorry.

Jerry is an amateur woodworker and struggling shade tree mechanic. There's nothing he can't take apart, but many things he can't reassemble. You'll find him writing and speaking his loud opinion on Android Central and occasionally on Twitter .

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The 12 Best Chrome Flags to Upgrade Your Browsing Experience

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The 3 best mac and windows browsers with a built-in vpn, 7 reasons why hard drives fail (and how to prevent it).

Google Chrome is the world's most popular browser, but even though it gets a lot right, you can still improve it. Chrome experts probably know that some of its best options are hidden.

Many of these secret options live in the Chrome Flags menu. Let's discuss some of the best Chrome flags that you can tweak for a faster, handier, or more enjoyable experience.

How Do I Get Chrome Flags?

Chrome has a list of experimental features that you can access by entering this address in your search bar:

Doing so will grant you access to the backdoor list of new options. This is a hidden Chrome page to prevent novice users from playing with them and accidentally creating issues. Not all of them are applicable for normal use, but you'll find several that are worth tweaking.

Please note Chrome's warning that these flags can cause security issues and potential data loss.

Note that since the flags aren't in any sort of order, use the search bar at the top of the screen to easily jump to them. Google may change or remove these flags at any time, so you shouldn't get too attached to them. Sometimes they end up in the stable release of Chrome as full features; other times they disappear.

Once you've enabled the Chrome flags you want to try, just click the big Relaunch Now button at the bottom of the screen. Chrome will restart and you can use the flags you've turned on.

How Do I Enable the New UI in Chrome?

Google released Chrome version 69 in September 2018. This version marked a revamped user interface, complete with more rounded tabs than before. Since Chrome updates automatically, you're almost certainly using the new UI already.

It doesn't hurt to check for updates while you're at it. You'll need to head into Chrome's options to do this. Wondering how to get to Chrome's settings to update? Click the three-bar Menu icon and browse to Help > About Google Chrome to check for browser updates. We used Chrome version 73 when creating this list.

How Do I Go Back to the Old Chrome?

Shortly after the new layout released, you could use a flag to go back to the old Chrome look. However, this flag is no longer available. Thus, the only way to go back to the old Chrome look would be to use an older version. We don't recommend this, as older versions aren't as secure.

How to Reset Chrome Flags

If you change some Chrome flags and later find something isn't working right, don't panic. Just open the flags page again and click the Reset all to default button.

1. Picture-in-Picture Mode

Search: #enable-picture-in-picture . This also requires enabling #enable-surfaces-for-videos .

Doing one task at a time is so last year. The latest trend is picture-in-picture mode, which allows you to pop out a window on your mobile device to watch a video or other content on top of another app.

Using this flag, you can try the same on your desktop. It works fairly well; right-click twice on a YouTube video and choose  Picture in picture . This will pop the video out into a window you can move around anywhere---even outside of Chrome.

2. Tab Discarding

Search: #automatic-tab-discarding

Chrome is infamous for sucking up a ton of memory . If you have a lower-end computer, you can use this flag to help conserve some RAM. Enabling it will make Chrome "disable" tabs that you haven't used in a while. They stay at the top of your browser and will reload when you click them.

Visit chrome://discards to see some information about tab discarding. The list shows how "important" Chrome thinks each tab is.

3. Quickly Mute Tabs

Search: #sound-content-setting

Everyone hates sites that blast auto-playing videos every time you visit. To combat this, Chrome lets you right-click a tab and choose  Mute site to keep it quiet in the future. But doing this will mute all future tabs of that site, which you might not want.

Set this flag to Disable d and you'll get the old Mute tab action back. This lets you mute one tab of a website without affecting the audio if you open that site in the future.

4. Generate Passwords Automatically

Search: #automatic-password-generation

You hopefully know that using a strong password is paramount to online security. We recommend using a password manager to create and save strong passwords. If you don't want to try a dedicated app, you can try a built-in Chrome feature.

Enable the flag above, make sure you're signed into your Google account in Chrome, and your browser will generate passwords on account creation pages. It syncs these to your Google account automatically.

5. Stop Websites from Hijacking Navigation

Search: #enable-history-entry-requires-user-gesture

Have you ever clicked the Back button on a website and found that you stayed on the same page? This is due to websites abusing the History feature in your browser and writing dummy entries that keep you on their page when you click Back . Thus, you have to click the button several times quickly to escape.

Chrome's developers noticed this and added a flag to battle it. Enable it, and websites won't be allowed to write extra entries into your history unless you interact with the page.

6. Smooth Scrolling

Search: #smooth-scrolling

When you scroll a page using your mouse wheel, arrow keys, or touchpad shortcut, you might have noticed a jerky animation, especially if you have lots of tabs open. This flag will smooth out that stutter and make your scrolling nice and crisp.

The Default setting on this flag seems to enable smooth scrolling. However, some claim that when you have many Chrome tabs open, the browser reverts to the clunky scroll format. So while you might not notice a difference with this one if you have a powerful PC, you can still give it a try if you like.

7. Get Extra Warning About Insecure Sites

Search: #enable-mark-http-as

You've probably noticed that Chrome displays secure sites (using HTTPS) with a green padlock icon. Whenever a site uses an insecure connection (HTTP), however, Chrome doesn't use any colors. It displays a Not Secure message, but that's easy to miss.

Set this flag to Enabled (mark as actively dangerous) , and Chrome will feature that Not Secure text in red instead. It's a minor touch, but a good reminder not to enter any private information on insecure sites. Note that Chrome will always display a red warning icon on unsafe sites, like those with invalid security certificates.

8. Enable HDR

Search: #enable-hdr

HDR, or high dynamic range, is one of the latest advancements in display technology. It essentially makes colors richer by increasing the contrast and providing more colors to display.

If you own an HDR monitor, you should take a moment to enable this flag so Chrome supports HDR content. It might not do a whole lot yet, but we'll surely see more support for HDR in the near future.

9. Easily Show Cached Websites

Search: #show-saved-copy

When you visit a website, your browser stores a copy of it in the cache. This allows it to quickly display the page without downloading everything again when you next visit it.

Normally, when you try to access a website that won't load, your only options are refreshing and waiting. But if you set this flag to Enable , you'll see a new Show saved copy button. This lets you see the website as your browser last saved it, as long as you haven't cleared it.

Of course, if the website isn't responding, you can't do much with it. But this will at least let you finish an article you were reading.

10. Show Autofill Predictions

Search: #show-autofill-type-predictions

You probably use Chrome's autofill all the time to populate fields with common info like your address. You can use a flag to take this handy feature a step further. Enabling it will pre-populate fields with your autofill text.

11. Automatically Reload Offline Tabs

Search: #enable-offline-auto-reload

If your browser goes offline and you have a ton of tabs open, you usually have to manually click each of them to activate and reload them. If you enable this flag, Chrome will automatically reload any offline tabs when you get back online.

Use it with caution, as it could result in a heavy workload if you have lots of tabs open. If you prefer, you can disable this flag and enable a similar flag, labeled #enable-offline-auto-reload-visible-only . This will only reload offline tabs when they're visible.

12. Reduce Tracking

Search:  #disable-hyperlink-auditing

It's no secret that all sorts of web entities love to track your browsing . While it's not one of the strongest ways to block trackers, you can set this flag to Disabled to turn off the sending of " hyperlink auditing pings." Every little bit helps.

What Are Your Favorite Chrome Flags?

We've looked at some of the best Chrome flags; now you have all sorts of new Chrome options to play around with. Google could easily remove any of these flags or add new ones, so keep an eye out if you're interested in trying more experimental features. You can also try the Chrome Beta for access to the latest features before they go mainstream.

For more like this, our list of power user tips for Chrome on Android covers some handy Chrome flags for Android.

Want more ways to make Chrome better? Try these extensions to improve your browsing experience .

• Google Chrome
• Browsing History

14 Settings on Google Chrome Flags Page To Make It Faster

There are many ways to customize Chrome to optimize your browsing experience, such as using Chrome extensions . One such method is using Chrome flags to access experimental features.

Chrome flags are hidden experimental features of Chrome that haven’t made it to the main Chrome interface yet. Unfortunately, many people don’t know these features exist due to having a rather unconventional method to access them, or they simply don’t use them because being experimental, they could backfire.

If you want some cool new features in Chrome or boost Chrome speed, then Chrome flags can help you. Although there are hundreds of flags, not all are made to enhance the Chrome experience or even used by regular users. Therefore, I have handpicked some of the best Chrome flags for you that will surely enhance your Chrome experience.

Warning: As these are experimental features, there is a slight chance they may bug out and negatively impact your browser. This could mean a mild drop in performance or, in worst cases, losing your data. Although it’s rare, you must understand and use these features at your own risk.

How to access Chrome flags?

Before I tell you about these Chrome flags, you need to know how to access Chrome flags. There are two ways to access them; you can either use a direct URL for a flag or access the main flags page and search for the flags you need.

For the direct URLs, I’ll provide them with each flag, and you’ll have the copy/paste them in the address bar to access them. If you want to access the flags page, then type chrome://flags in the address bar and hit enter to open it. There is a search bar at the top, which you can use to search for flags using related terms (I’ll provide the keywords too).

You need to enable them and relaunch Chrome to start using them. Now that you know how to access and enable them, let’s see some of the best Chrome flags you can use:

#1. Heavy Ad Intervention

Chrome already blocks intrusive ads that can negatively impact your browsing experience. If you want to improve ad blocking further, you can enable this flag to stop heavy ads from loading. Ads such as video or gif that use too much browser resource will not load when this flag is enabled.

Search term: heavy ad

URL: chrome://flags/#enable-heavy-ad-intervention

#2. Enable Reader Mode

Like Firefox Reader View, Chrome also has a reader mode, which makes reading online articles easier. When you use this feature on a page, it will only show the main content and images and strip away everything else, including side panel content and ads.

After enabling the flag, you will see a new Page icon in the address bar to click to turn on reader mode.

Search term: reader mode

URL: chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode

#3. Parallel downloading

This flag can speed up your download speed up to 4x. If you have used download manager software before, you must already know how they download faster by creating multiple connections. This flag does the same thing and allows Chrome to create multiple connections to the download source to speed up the download.

Search term: parallel downloading

URL: chrome://flags/#enable-parallel-downloading

#4. Tab Hover Cards

This flag adds a feature to view more information about a tab just by hovering over it. The information includes the page’s main title and URL. This feature is handy for people who open up dozens of tabs simultaneously, so it becomes difficult to see the tab website name without opening it.

With hover cards, you’ll just have to hover the mouse cursor over a tab to learn which website or page is open.

Search term: hover cards

URL: chrome://flags/#tab-hover-cards

#5. Tab Hover Card Images

If you enable the above card, you can also enable this flag to show an image of the tab along with page information. This can only be enabled once the above-mentioned flag is enabled. The image will be of the exact area of the page where you left the tab. This means you can also compare the content of two pages by opening them in two tabs side-by-side.

Search term: hover card images.

URL: chrome://flags/#tab-hover-card-images

#6. Force Dark Mode

This flag forces all the web content to load with a dark theme. This can be a handy feature if you use your PC in a dark room and don’t want to strain your eyes. The text and buttons are turned white or lighter color, and the whole background is made black.

Search term:  dark mode

URL: chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark

#7. GPU rasterization

Rasterization is basically the process of creating images or web content pixel-by-pixel to display on your PC. Chrome usually uses your CPU power to complete this process. However, if you have a dedicated GPU in your PC, you can enable this flag to force rasterization to be always completed by GPU instead.

GPU can drop frame generation speed to as low as 5ms/frame from 100ms/frame, so it can significantly boost Chrome speed if you enable this flag.

Search term: GPU rasterization

URL: chrome://flags/#enable-gpu-rasterization

#8. Smooth Scrolling

This flag makes a tiny change that can heavily improve your readability. Usually, when you scroll a webpage, it does small stutters with each scroll tick. After enabling this flag, the page will scroll smoothly, and you’ll be easily able to see the content while fast scrolling. This is perfect when you need to skim through content quickly.

Search term: smooth scrolling

URL: chrome://flags/#smooth-scrolling

#9. Experimental QUIC protocol

QUIC (Quick UDP Internet connection) is a new connection protocol similar to TCP and UDP protocol, but it is much faster and secure at the same time. It decreases connection time by creating a single connection rather than multiple. Although it’s already being used in Chrome for connection with Google services, you can enable this flag to use it for other sites too.

It’s still experimental; you should disable it if you notice any connection issues.

Search for: quic

URL: chrome://flags/#enable-quic

#10. Prevent risky downloads

This flag adds an extra layer of security by preventing executable files from being downloaded from insecure sources. Viruses are usually spread as direct executable files, and an insecure source can be compromised to share these files. This flag will prevent such downloads, but of course, it can have many false positives too.

Search term: risky downloads

URL: chrome://flags/#treat-unsafe-downloads-as-active-content

#11. Enable Tab Search

Another great feature for those who stack dozens of tabs at the same time. Tab search will add a small button at the top, which you can use to search for a specific tab opened. You just need to enter the page title or website name, and the opened tab will show up.

Search term: tab search

URL: chrome://flags/#enable-tab-search

#12. Enable lazy image loading

This feature stops all the images on a web page from loading at once. Once you enable, images will only load when you scroll down and reach near them. This helps in loading pages faster and also saves bandwidth as only required images are loaded.

Make sure you choose the enable option that lets you lazy load images without the lazy loading attribute.

Search term: lazy image

URL: chrome://flags/#enable-lazy-image-loading

#13. Back-forward cache

If you use the forward and backward buttons in Chrome, this option is excellent for saving data and navigating faster. Enabling this flag will cache full web pages to let you navigate to them again without using an internet connection. The forward/backward navigation will be instant too.

There is an option only to enable caching of the same site pages or every webpage you open.

Search term: back forward cache

URL: chrome://flags/#back-forward-cache

#14. Enable LiteVideos

If you are looking to save internet data and don’t mind watching videos at standard quality, then enable this flag. This flag will tell media requests that your internet is slow, so videos will only load in SD quality.

Search term: litevideos

URL: chrome://flags/#enable-lite-video

Ending thoughts

I am using many of these flags myself and haven’t run into any noticeable problems yet. They are still experimental, though, so depending on your PC and activity, any of these flags can have a negative impact. Thankfully, the flags page shows all the activated flags at the very top. If you notice your Chrome browser acting up, just go to the flags page and undo the changes to fix the issue.

If you are a developer, then you may want to explore the outstanding features of Chrome Dev Tools.

Top 9 Flags to Make Google Chrome Faster in 2022

Supreeth is passionate about technology and dedicates himself to helping people figure it out. An engineer by education, his understanding of the inner workings of all types of gadgets and devices ensures he provides top-notch guidance, tips, and recommendations to his readers. When away from the desk, you will find him traveling, playing FIFA, or hunting for a good movie.

Google Chrome is a household name because of its mostly snappy performance. Yes, ‘mostly’ snappy. Over time, we observed that Chrome gets sluggish. If clearing browser data and resetting Chrome does not cut it – you probably need to check out the experimental features called flags. In this article, we’ll show you nine such flags to make Google Chrome faster.

Flags on Chrome are present on a hidden page. This is because enabling the wrong flag can mess up your web browsing experience. Therefore, we advise you to carefully read this article to enable the right flags that will help improve speed and performance on Google Chrome.

What Are Flags in Chrome

Flags are a set of experimental features and configurations on Google Chrome. These are not intended for regular users but for developers.

If you are developing a web application, you obviously must ensure that it runs well on Google Chrome. This of course will need you to test the behavior of the application under each configuration of Google Chrome. And the flags menu on Chrome lets you do all of these tests and experiments, by enabling and disabling many micro-level features on Google Chrome.

However, a few flags are safe to use and enhance the web browsing experience. We looked into such flags and have explained in detail how they will help you. But before we get there, let’s understand how to open the flags menu on Google Chrome.

How to Open Chrome Flags Menu

In the address bar of Google Chrome, type in ‘chrome://flags’. This is all you need to do to enter the flags page. It might seem overwhelmingly technical at first but fret not as we have an easy-to-follow procedure to enable useful flags.

But how do we find useful flags and enable and disable them in the long list of flags? Read our next section to find out more.

How to Enable Google Chrome Flags

Step 1 : Go to chrome://flags.

Step 2 : Enter the name of the flag to find it. We have recommended the best ones in the next section.

Step 3: Once you find the flag, click on the drop-down menu next to it.

Step 4: Now, click on Enabled to enable the flag.

Step 5: Now, you will be asked to restart Chrome to get the settings into effect. Simply click on Relaunch.

Now that we have learned how to enable flags, it’s time we start searching, and configuring some of the useful flags that’ll help make Chrome faster.

9 Best Flags to Speed Up Google Chrome

Here’s a list of nine flags to improve your web browsing experience on Google Chrome. Read the description to understand what each flag does, and how it can affect Chrome. Once you understand and feel the necessity for it, you can go ahead and enable the same. For convenience, we have added a quick link to open up these flags on Chrome.

1. Experimental QUIC Protocol

Online protocols are how two applications can exchange information over the internet. QUIC is an experimental protocol developed by Google. The objective of this protocol is to reduce latency, and congestion in comparison to TCP – which is the protocol that is used online. Thus, enabling QUIC can help improve your web browsing speeds.

chrome://flags/#enable-quic

2. Parallel Downloading

Consider a situation where you are downloading a large file on Google Chrome, and it is taking up a lot of time. When you enable Parallel Downloading, the large file is split into different parts. The downloader will establish multiple connections to different servers and download the parts. This can potentially increase the download speeds on Chrome.

chrome://flags/#enable-parallel-downloading

3. GPU Rasterization

By default, Chrome will not use the GPU to process and render media. If your PC has a powerful GPU – you can enable the GPU rasterization flag. This will ensure your GPU also performs a few tasks and thus, improve some efficiency in the performance.

chrome://flags/#enable-gpu-rasterization

4. Override Software Rendering List

You might have a powerful GPU on your system, but at times Chrome will not be able to use GPU acceleration due to various reasons. This is usually caused by Chrome failing to recognize and enable GPU drivers.

When you enable ‘Override software rendering’, it will force Chrome to use GPU rendering over the default rendering mechanism. Thus, this GPU acceleration can enable a better web browsing performance.

chrome://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist

5. Fuzzy Search for Tab Search

All of us have experienced situations where we have hundreds of tabs open on Google Chrome, and we are unable to find that one particular tab. And to solve this problem, there is a tab search option on the Google Chrome toolbar , the bottom-facing arrow next to the minimize icon.

To make the search results even faster, you can enable the ‘Fuzzy search for Tab Search’ flag. It allows you to search for terms similar to your intended search query and not the exact one. For example, if you are searching a Google Calendar tab, you can type in ‘GC’ and it will return the search result that includes the Google Calendar tab.

chrome://flags/#tab-search-fuzzy-search

6. Back Forward Cache

The back and forward button on the toolbar of Google Chrome is the fastest way to navigate between websites you just visited. If you have been a fan of this feature and use it all the time, you will appreciate this flag.

Enabling the ‘Back-forward cache’ flag will cache your recently visited websites. This will ensure you can instantly access the last site you visited on the same tab, or go forward a website.

chrome://flags/#back-forward-cache

7. Zero-Copy Rasterizer

A GPU has a temporary memory unit called the VRAM. This exclusively works with the GPU. In some cases, especially if you are using an older version of RAM, your VRAM will be significantly faster. This will also help if your RAM is quite low in size .

If you enable the ‘Zero-copy rasterizer’ flag, Chrome will use the VRAM for tasks and increase the speed of your web browsing experience.

8. Smooth Scrolling

Ever noticed sluggish scrolling on content-heavy webpages? We’re sure you have. We have too, even on PCs with good internals. Thankfully, there is a fix for this issue within flags.

If you enable the Smooth Scrolling flag, you can experience a much smoother and faster scrolling experience. As you enable the flag, it adds a few lines of code in the back end of the website (CSS, React, etc.), that can improve your navigation experience through an animation effect.

chrome://flags/#enable-zero-copy

9. Show Autofill Predictions

All of us visit websites that require us to fill in personal details for shipping, registration, etc. One way to speed up this process is to enable the ‘Show Autofill predictions’ flag. When you enable this flag, you get predictions to fill unnamed fields with your existing autofill information saved on Chrome.

chrome://flags/#show-autofill-type-predictions

These are some of the flags to make Google Chrome faster. However, if you have accidentally enabled a flag or want to opt out of flags entirely for whatever reason, here’s how to do it.

How to Reset Chrome Flag Settings

While you can individually disable flags, it is quite a hassle to search or even remember what you enabled in the first place.

You can quickly disable all flags at once using the ‘Reset all’ button provided on the main page of the flags.

We hope you’re clear on how to enable and use flags on Google Chrome. In case you have a few questions, you can take a look at our FAQ section.

FAQs on Chrome Flags

Yes, Chrome flags are safe to use. However, enabling the wrong flag might make your browser unstable, so we recommend enabling only the flags that you are fully aware of.

Yes, Chrome flags are available for the following platforms—Chrome for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android , Linux, and Chrome OS.

Not all flags are available for all users, as it depends upon the device you are using and the build number of your Chrome. The best you can do is ensure to update to the latest version of Google Chrome .

Make the Best Use of chrome://flags

Provided you use it in the right way, flags on Chrome can significantly enhance your web browsing experience. We hope this article helped you use flags to make Google Chrome faster. Stay updated to the latest version of Google Chrome to never miss out on any new set of flags.

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Last updated on 22 September, 2022

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Google Chrome generative AI features based on Gemini models now rolling out

Chrome for macOS, Windows and Linux has picked up a trio of useful new generative AI features based on the latest Google Gemini models.

You can now search anything on the web visually, compare products across sites and search your browsing history using natural language queries. Announced on Google’s The Keyword blog by Chrome Vice President Parisa Tabriz on August 1, 2024, the new features are now rolling out.

Only enhanced visual search was available in Chrome 127 at the time of writing. Multi-site product comparison and natural history search will be released in stages “in the next few weeks, starting in the United States.”

Product comparison across sites

This is one of the better use cases for AI large language models and text summarization. Tab Compare does precisely that. Comparison shopping can be a nightmare, with dozens of product tabs open at any given moment. Tab Compare creates a new page with quick overviews of products across different pages and sites, all in one place. The browser will also generate a comparison table by showing a suggestion next to your tabs.

Visual search via Google Lens

Desktop Chrome already supports visual search by right-clicking an image and choosing Search Image with Google from the menu, which opens the image search results page in a sidebar. It’s a shortcut to Google image search, basically. However, visual search in Chrome is getting another boost, with the ability to search anything you see with Google Lens.

Just drag the Lens icon from the right side of the URL bar to have the pointer turn into a loupe icon, then use it to select any piece of text (from a video, too) or image on the page. You’ll then see images from across the web that match the selected item. You can then refine your search with follow-up request for a specific color, size, brand, etc.

“You can use Google Lens to make shopping on the web easier, like identifying a backpack from a video you’re watching and then finding it in your preferred color in the Chrome side panel, along with where to purchase,” Google explains. Lens can even solve any selected mathematical formulas or equations. Or, you can highlight text on an image of a restaurant menu, and use the Copy or Translate commands.

Conversational history search

I’ve always wanted to search my browsing history more effectively. The way history search on all browsers leaves a lot to be desired, as your keywords are only matched against the saved URL title. I would have liked for my browser to find visited pages in my history with content that matches my keywords.

But Chrome goes one step further. With natural language history search, I can type something like, “What was that new fancy restaurant I looked at last week?” and Chrome will find matches in my history. This feature must be manually turned on in the Chrome settings. Google ensures that browsing data from Chrome’s Incognito Mode is excluded from history search.

Other AI features in Chrome

The above features are in addition to the ones Chrome picked up earlier in 2024, including a writing assistant available in any text field via a right-click, a generative AI-powered Tab Organizer which automatically suggests and creates tab groups based on your open tabs and Gemini shortcuts in the address bar like @gemini to use the Gemini chatbot, @bookmarks to search across your bookmarked pages, @history to search your browsing history and @tabs to search open tabs.

Technical How-tos, Tips, and Tricks

Unlocking the power of chrome flags: a guide to experimental features, what are chrome flags, how to access and use chrome flags, considerations and cautions, chrome beta: an alternative for testing new features, final thoughts.

Whether you’re a developer, a programmer, or simply a technology enthusiast, Chrome Flags lets you peek into the future of Google Chrome. Just remember to navigate this playground with an awareness of the risks involved.

Google Chrome Experimental Flags Just Got Easier to Use

Google Chrome experimental flags offer users on different devices and operating systems to activate and deactivate various features and processes on their Chrome browser. For example, one of the features you could enable is an FPS counter, which shows a page’s actual frame rate in frames per second, whenever hardware acceleration is active.

How to use Google Chrome Experimental flags

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Google Chrome Gets 3 New Experimental Generative AI Features

Organize tabs, make custom themes, and get help with writing

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Who doesn't want help with writing, organizing tabs, or custom themes? No one, that's who.

Google just dropped three new generative AI-powered experimental features for its Chrome browser. Now, you can use them to organize your tabs (you know you have too many of those open, right?), customize your themes, and (of course) get help when writing on the web.

With the new release of Chrome, M121, you can enable these features with a few simple clicks. Just navigate to Settings from the three-dot menu in the upper right of your browser, navigate to Experimental AI, and then enable the new abilities. They're currently disabled for enterprise and educational accounts, for now, though. You should see the option on Macs and Windows PCs "over the next few days," according to VP of Chrome, Parisa Tabriz, in a statement .

Sure, you've organized your tabs with Tab Groups for a while now, but making them is kind of a hassle. With Tab Organizer enabled, Chrome can now automatically suggest and create tab groups for you, based on the tabs you have open. To make this happen, right-click on any tab open and choose 'Organize Similar Tabs' (or just click the drop-down arrow to the left of all your tabs in Chrome). The browser will suggest names (or even cute little emojis) to name the groups for easy access later.

If you've fallen in love with the AI-generated wallpapers in Android 14 and on Pixel 8 handsets, you'll dig the new text-to-image ability of Chrome. Make your own themes "based on a subject, mood, visual style, and color that you choose." Head over to the Customize Chrome side panel, click 'Change Theme' and 'Create with AI.' All the options are there, with plenty of styles and moods to choose from, no text-prompting necessary. Google even has a collection of the team's favorite AI-made Themes to check out before you start creating your own.

Finally, Chrome can help you write stuff on the web, from reviews to RSVPs to inquiries about marketplace items. The feature arrives next month, and once enabled, you'll be able to right-click any text box or field in Chrome and choose 'Help me write.' Simple and easy. How good the resulting text will be is anyone's guess, but it's likely going to be a good starting point, anyway.

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Google Chrome update to address one of its biggest flaws — Here's how to get it early

You won't believe how much better Chrome is about to get

Google Chrome has been notoriously deemed incredibly demanding on hardware, but an upcoming update that's currently available on the developer version of Chrome could address this issue.

It's no secret that Chrome is by far the most popular browser option available, regardless of how hard Microsoft tries to shove Edge down our throats. In fact, it's not even close, with Backlinko highlighting that Chrome's 2024 market share is at 64.73%, whereas Edge is at a measly 4.97%. 

But among all of Google Chrome's praise comes frequent criticism, whether it be around its privacy concerns , vulnerability issues , or problems with it simply being too demanding on CPU or RAM. In fact, our very own Rael Hornby stepped away from the browser , citing that it no longer "Feels all that lightweight and speedy" anymore.

However, it seems like Google is taking a page out of Opera GX 's book, which features a resource management setting that provides a detailed breakdown on how much performance is being dedicated to each individual tab, whether it's involving RAM or CPU usage.

Chrome's implementation isn't completely identical to this, but it's similar in that it will help users get a greater understanding of where the application is consuming so much of your PC's power.

Chrome's upcoming feature changes everything

Google has yet to confirm when the update is coming to the public version of Chrome, but it's currently available within its experimental versions.

Yes, you no longer have to worry about Chrome absolutely destroying your computer with its RAM-hungry habits. This comes in the form of a new experimental flag present within Google Chrome Canary , which will give Chrome permission to warn the user if the application is sapping an extraordinary amount of processing power. 

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But Chrome won't just warn the user by vaguely gesturing towards the overabundance of the CPU being used, and will instead highlight which tabs in particular are the culprit.

This is massive for anyone guilty of keeping a hundred tabs open at a time, some of which might be tearing your PC apart without you realizing it. 

I've had situations where my computer will suddenly crash and require a forced restart, and I can only assume my dozens upon dozens of Chrome tabs are the culprit, although it probably doesn't help when I have other applications open alongside it.

Being warned that a particular tab is especially doing damage would address one of the biggest criticisms many users have been tossing at Chrome for years about its performance zapping behaviors.

How to activate it on Google Chrome Canary

If you've downloaded Google Chrome Canary and are looking for how to activate this new setting, here's what you do, as discovered by WindowsReport .

1. Type chrome://flags into Google Chrome Canary's address bar. Heed the cautionary statement at the top that says WARNING! EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES AHEAD!

2. Go down to Enable performance intervention suggestions and toggle it to Enable .

3. Right below it, do the same for Enable performance intervention demo mode .

4. You'll be prompted to relaunch Chrome . Do it!

And just like that, it's active. You can manually trigger the feature by going to chrome://discards and selecting Trigger Performance CPU intervention at the top, which will then make the little notification appear about which tabs are draining the most performance.

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Self-described art critic and unabashedly pretentious, Claire finds joy in impassioned ramblings about her closeness to video games. She has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism & Media Studies from Brooklyn College and five years of experience in entertainment journalism. Claire is a stalwart defender of the importance found in subjectivity and spends most days overwhelmed with excitement for the past, present and future of gaming. When she isn't writing or playing Dark Souls, she can be found eating chicken fettuccine alfredo and watching anime.

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Break These Bad Habits to Browse the Web Faster

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We're slowly teetering into the era of "AI fatigue." This is partially due to our inability to accept change, but it's really a problem of quality—most of the AI tools that we hear about are half-baked, bone-headed, or controversial. It's a shame, as some AI tools, like Google Chrome's new Organize Similar Tabs feature, are genuinely awesome.

Organize Similar Tabs first debuted alongside two other AI tools in January 2024. But the feature, which automatically condenses similar tabs into smaller tab groups , wasn't included in mainline Chrome releases until today. It needs to be manually enabled from the browser's "Experimental AI" settings, but that's the only hurdle.

After enabling Organize Similar Tabs, you'll see an "Organize tabs" button in the tab drop-down menu (or when right-clicking any tab). Chrome will scan all of your open tabs and suggest unique tab groups based on their contents. If you have a bunch of Google services open, for example, Chrome will offer to create a "Google Services" group.

I'm very impressed by this feature. It overcomes my biggest problem with tab groups—I don't feel like taking the time to create or manage them. Chrome even adds a nice emoji to the title of AI-generated tab groups, which is a fantastic idea that never would've crossed my mind.

On the topic of "AI fatigue," I really hope that corporations like Google and Microsoft take a step back to see the damage that they're inflicting on themselves. Slapping the "AI" label on everything, debuting AI products that don't have a real purpose, and showcasing AI products in tone-deaf Olympics advertisements is a myopic strategy. Investors may salivate over this stuff, but a large portion of consumers are plugging their ears, rolling their eyes, and missing out on good AI features like Oraganize Similar Tabs.

All Google Chrome users running version 127.0.6533.89 or later can enable Organize Similar Tabs—this feature does not require a Canary, Dev, or Beta installation. Simply enter Chrome's settings, navigate to the "Experimental AI" sidebar tab, toggle "Try out experimental AI," and activate "Tab organize." If you do not see the "Experimental AI" tab in settings, enable account syncing from the profile photo in your menu bar and try again.

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Google makes it easier to test experimental features in Chrome

The company wants to collect more feedback on future updates..

It turns out increasing the cadence of Chrome updates isn’t the only change Google has planned for its web browser. In a tweet spotted by 9to5Google (via XDA Developers ), Chrome design head Alex Ainslie detailed a new feature that makes it easier to try out any experimental functionality that Google is working on. As of this week, the browser’s Canary version includes a beaker icon where you can enable experimental features, as well as send feedback to the Chrome team.

👩‍🔬 We hope to gather more feedback about @googlechrome updates as they're in development. If you're using Canary today (and soon Dev and Beta) you'll notice a little beaker on the toolbar that makes it easier to try out new stuff and share suggestions about how it should evolve. pic.twitter.com/doPLzJbnRW — Alex Ainslie (@alexainslie) March 5, 2021

In the past, trying out experiments in Chrome meant enabling flags. That made them tricky to access if you didn’t know what you were doing. It also wasn’t easy to see at a glance which ones you had enabled. Ainslie said Google is adding the menu to collect more feedback on updates as they’re in development. To that end, the beaker icon will make its way to the developer and beta versions of Chrome as well. That means you won't have to use Chrome's least stable release to see what Google has in store for users.

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Chrome 128 beta

Unless otherwise noted, the following changes apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, ChromeOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 128 is beta as of 24 July 2024. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

This release adds four new CSS features.

CSS ruby-align property

There are multiple ways to align characters when the length of ruby annotations and the base characters don't match, and the ruby-align property lets you choose the one that works best for your design. The property takes one of the following keyword values:

• space-around
• space-between

Line-breakable ruby

Makes line-breaks possible within elements with display: ruby .

Previously a single pair of a ruby-base and a ruby-text was not line-breakable, and would be pushed to the next line if the current line had not enough space for the entire pair. Now each of the ruby-base and the ruby-text can be split into multiple lines.

Minimum size of <option> within <select> dropdown

The WCAG accessibility guidelines specify that the size of pointer inputs must be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels. This changes makes the <option> element within the <select> dropdown meet this height requirement.

Standardized CSS zoom property

Updates the existing implementation of the previously non-standard CSS zoom property to align with the new standard. This changes various JavaScript APIs to align with the spec, changes zoom to apply to iframe content documents, and changes it to apply to all inherited length properties (previously it only changed inherited font-size ).

Additions to Attribution Reporting

Chrome 128 includes two additional features for Attribution Reporting. There are changes to source-destination-limit logic, with the aim of reducing the rate of transmission loss. Flexible contributions filtering will improve API report batching capabilities.

AudioContext.onerror

AudioContext creation and audio rendering errors are now reported to web applications with a callback assigned to AudioContext.onerror .

Cross-site ancestor chain bit for CookiePartitionKey of partitioned cookies

Chrome 128 adds a cross-site ancestor bit to the keyring of the partitioned cookie's CookiePartitionKey . This change unifies the partition key with the partition key values used in storage partitioning and adds protection against clickjacking attacks by preventing cross-site embedded frames from having access to the top-level-site's partitioned cookies.

document.caretPositionFromPoint

Returns the current caret position from a given screen point in the form of a CaretPosition object representing the caret position indicating current text insertion point including the containing DOM node, caret's character offset, and the client rectangle of caret range. This feature also supports getting the CaretPosition inside Shadow DOM.

PointerEvent.deviceProperties for Multi-Pen Inking

Currently, developers have no way to distinguish between two individual pens on an ink-enabled digitizer. The existing PointerEvent.id attribute is implemented in different ways and does not always persist for each ink stroke or interaction with the screen.

This change provides a secure and reliable way to identify individual pen (pointers) interacting with the screen to set specific colors or pen shapes for each device interacting with the digitizer. It extends the PointerEvent interface to include a new attribute, deviceProperties . This contains the attribute uniqueId , that represents a session-persistent, document isolated, unique identifier that a developer can reliably use to identify individual pens interacting with the page.

Private Aggregation API: client-side contribution merging

Modifies the Private Aggregation API to merge histogram contributions with the same bucket and filtering ID before embedding in the aggregatable report's encrypted payload.

Private Aggregation imposes a limit on the number of contributions that can be embedded in a single aggregatable report, with any additional contributions being dropped. By merging contributions where possible, we can get additional utility out of the limit. Note that, ignoring the dropping of excess contributions, merging these sorts of contributions shouldn't have any impact on the final summary reports.

Promise.try

Promise.try is a TC39 proposal for a new static method. Promise.try(f) is shorthand for new Promise(resolve => resolve(f())) .

SkipAd media session action

Supports the SkipAd media session action. This action lets browsers show a button in the system media controls or in the Picture-in-Picture window.

WebAuthn hints

The new hints parameter in WebAuthn requests lets sites provide guidance to browsers to guide their UI. The canonical use case is enterprises that know their internal sites use only security keys and want to be able to communicate that so that browsers focus the UI on that case.

Hints also resolve a tension where the current authenticatorAttachment parameter is strict: setting it to platform excludes all cross-platform options.

Write image/svg+xml content in UTF-8 format on Windows

Switch to UTF-8 on Windows while writing image/svg+xml format to the clipboard. HTML format already uses UTF-* on Windows and this will allow copying and pasting SVG images from the clipboard.

On all other supported platforms, image/svg+xml is serialized into UTF-8 before it gets written to the clipboard.

Web Share API on macOS

The API enables web developers to build share buttons that display the same system share dialog boxes used by mobile applications. This previously shipped on Android, Windows, and ChromeOS, and is now also coming to macOS.

New origin trials

In Chrome 128 you can opt into the following new origin trials .

Deprecate 0.0.0.0 for Private Network Access (PNA)

We propose to block access to IP address 0.0.0.0 before PNA is fully deployed.

Chrome is deprecating direct access to private network endpoints from public websites as part of the PNA specification . Services listening on localhost ( 127.0.0.0/8 ) are considered private according to the specification. Chrome's PNA protection can be bypassed using the IP address 0.0.0.0 to access services listening on the localhost on macOS and Linux.

This can also be abused in DNS rebinding attacks targeting a web application listening on the localhost.

Since 0.0.0.0 is not (and shouldn't be) used in practice, it's deprecated separately from the rest of the private network requests deprecation.

Digital Credentials API

Websites can request credentials from mobile wallet apps through a variety of mechanisms today, for example custom URL handlers and QR code scanning. This feature lets sites request identity information from digital credentials inside wallets using Android's IdentityCredential CredMan system. It's extensible to support multiple credential formats (for example, ISO mDoc and W3C verifiable credential) and allows multiple wallet apps to be used. The API also includes mechanisms to reduce the risk of ecosystem-scale abuse of sensitive identity information.

Register for the Digital Credentials API origin trial .

FedCM multiple identity providers in single get() call

Allows FedCM to show multiple identity providers in the same dialog. This gives developers a convenient way to present all supported identity providers to users. We are planning to first tackle the case of having all providers in the same get() call.

Register for the FedCM Multiple Identity Providers origin trial .

FedCM: Button Mode for Chrome on Android

Button Mode API adds a new FedCM UI. With the Button Mode API, identity providers can use FedCM API even if their users don't have active identity provider (IdP) sessions upon the API call.

Register for the FedCM Button Mode origin trial .

FedCM: Continuation API bundle for Chrome on Android

The Continuation API bundles a few features. Continuation API lets the IDP open a popup window to finish the sign-in flow after potentially collecting additional information. Parameters API lets RPs pass additional data to the ID assertion endpoint. Fields API lets RPs bypass the data sharing prompt in favor of the IdP prompting. Multiple configURLs lets IdPs use different config files in different contexts. Finally, account labels allow filtering the account list per config file without providing additional entropy to the IdP.

Register for the FedCM Continuation API origin trial .

Disable standardized CSS zoom

The implementation of the previously non-standard CSS zoom property has been updated to align with the new standard. This changes various JavaScript APIs to align with the specification, changes zoom to apply to iframe content documents, and changes it to apply to all inherited length properties where previously it only changed inherited font-size .

This trial lets you opt back into the previous behavior to have more time to adjust your code.

Register for the Disable Standardized CSS zoom origin trial .

WebGPU Subgroups experimentation

Adds subgroup functionality to WebGPU. Subgroup operations perform SIMT operations to provide efficient communication and data sharing among groups of invocations. These operations can be used to accelerate applications by reducing memory overheads incurred by inter-invocation communication.

Deprecations and removals

There are no deprecations or removals planned for Chrome 128.

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License , and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License . For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies . Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2024-07-24 UTC.

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Your google chrome extensions may soon stop working.

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Google is disabling older extensions in its browser

Google is starting to enforce its promise to disable outdated Chrome extensions.

Chrome extensions add new features to the browser and are often used for facilities such as ad blockers, password managers and cloud computing services.

The company warned earlier this year that it would start disabling extensions that used its older Manifest V2 framework. Now users are starting to see warnings in their browser that “these extensions may soon no longer be supported”.

How To Tell Which Chrome Extensions Will Stop Working

To check if any of your currently installed Chrome extensions are in danger of being withdrawn, do the following:

• Click on the Extensions icon in the top-right corner of the Chrome web browser window—it looks like a jigsaw puzzle piece. Alternatively, open the Settings menu and select Extensions from the drop-down menu.
• At the top of the Extensions page that opens, you should see a warning such as the one shown below if any of your current extensions are using the outdated framework.

The Google browser will show this warning if your extensions are in danger

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Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, what can i do if my extensions are on the list.

The short answer is: not a lot.

There’s nothing you can do as a user to update the extensions, as it requires the extension developer to upgrade their code to use the latest V3 Manifest. One reason many Chrome extensions are stuck on V2 is that the developer is no longer updating the extension, so it will be removed from the browser in due course and won’t be available for new downloads.

This is troubling many users, as popular ad blockers are among those likely to be affected by the switch to V3.

As you can see from the screenshot above, Google provides a link to find alternatives to your outdated extensions. However, these are often not direct replacements.

In the screenshot above, for example, one of the outdated extensions in danger of deletion is Wikiwand, a plugin which makes the default Wikipedia page layout look more attractive and easy to read.

Google’s suggested replacements include the Adobe Acrobat PDF reader, Adblock and Chrome Remote Desktop, none of which offer anything remotely close to what Wikiwand does.

Wikiwand was last updated in November 2022, which suggests it may no longer be supported.

Will This Affect Other Chrome-Based Browsers?

Other web browsers, such as Microsoft Edge or Vivaldi, use the Chrome browser engine and the same extensions library as Google Chrome.

Although neither of those browsers were showing warnings for expiring extensions in my tests, Microsoft has announced plans to cease support for Manifest V2 extensions , though it hasn’t confirmed a specific timeline.

Vivaldi too has stated that it will eventually have to drop support for Manifest V2 extensions, although it doesn’t expect to do so until June 2025.

Vivaldi adds that its built-in features won’t be affected by the change. In a statement, the company said its integrated tracker and ad blocker “isn’t dependent on Chrome’s extension architecture, and we’re continually upgrading its powers and performance.”

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