64-Bit Chrome for Windows

After many years of waiting, the 64-bit version of Chrome for Windows is almost ready to be released. For now, it's limited to Canary and Dev Channel and you need to install it manually. 64-bit Chrome is only available for Windows 7 and Windows 8.

"The new version replaces the existing version while preserving all your settings and bookmarks, so there's no need to uninstall a current installation of Chrome. The majority of our users on Windows 7 or higher now have systems capable of running 64-bit applications, and this version of Chrome can take full advantage of these newer capabilities. This includes several improvements that align perfectly with Chrome's core principles of speed, security and stability," informs Google.

Google says there's about 25% improvement in performance and crash rates for the renderer process are almost half that of 32-bit Chrome. Despite all these advantages, 64-bit Chrome has been a low-priority task for Google, especially when it comes to Windows and Mac. Chrome for Linux is a 64-bit app since 2009.

Chrome Web Store Links to Android Apps

Chrome Web Store now shows links to Google Play for apps and extensions that are also available for Android. For example, Pocket's page includes this message next to the number of users: "Available for Android. Get it".

You can also find Chrome apps and extensions that are available for Android:

Google Play doesn't show links to Chrome Web Store apps, at least not yet. It will be interesting to see if Google plans to keep a separate store for Chrome or merge it with Google Play. When Google rebranded Android Market, I speculated that Google Play will become Google's unified store for digital content.

{ via Chrome Story }

Mobile Interface for Chrome Web Store

One of the most annoying things about Chrome Web Store was that it didn't work if you used a mobile phone or a tablet. Google only displayed a message that allowed you to send a reminder to download the app or extension from the desktop Chrome.

Chrome Web Store now has a mobile interface, but only for individual apps and extensions. The homepage, category pages and the search feature still aren't available. If you find a link to a Chrome app or extension, you can now open it in your favorite mobile browsers, read the description, check the screenshots and some other details. You can't read or write reviews, install extensions remotely, find related extensions, go to the homepage or to a category.

{ via François Beaufort }

Search Tips for Chrome's App Launcher

Chrome's app launcher has an interesting way to match results. Let's say you want to open Google Play Music. You can search for google play music, play music or you can just type the the first letter from each word and search for gpm. It also works if you type the first letters from the first word, followed by the first letters from the second word and so on. For example, you can also search for goplm, gplam, gmu.

Another example: launch Mahjong Solitaire by searching for ms.

{ via François Beaufort. }

Cast Videos in Chrome for Android

The latest beta release of Chrome 35 for Android added support for casting HTML5 videos. You can now send videos to the Chromecast from any site that uses HTML5 video players, including YouTube.

To connect to a Chromecast, you need to play a video in fullscreen, click the cast icon and select a Chromecast device. You can then change the volume, fast forward or switch to a different video. YouTube's mobile site has support for the TV queue, so you can add videos to the queue instead of playing them right away.

The Chromecast integration is not perfect, there are some bugs that need to be fixed, but it's nice to see that you can cast almost any video right from the mobile browser, without having to install other apps and wait for the developers to integrate their apps with Chromecast.

Chrome 35 for Android also adds support for undoing tab closing, Samsung's multi-window feature and fullscreen videos with subtitles and HTML5 controls. Here's a video that shows the undo close tab feature in action, courtesy of Android Police:

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Google Contextual Search

Chrome Beta for Android has a flag called "Enable contextual search". You can find it by opening a new tab, pasting this in the address bar: chrome://flags/#contextual-search and pressing Enter. If you click "Enable" and "Relaunch now" at the bottom of the page, you'll enable this new feature.

What happens after enabling the feature? Tap a word from a page and Google will display it at the bottom of the page next to other surrounding words and a Google logo. Tap the logo and Chrome sends you to an internal Google page you can't access. The URL starts with: https://layers.sandbox.google.com/contextualsearch and includes the word you've tapped, the context and the URL of the page.

It's not clear what's the goal of this feature, but I assume that Google might show some search results related to the words you've selected and the context.

{ Thanks, Jérôme Flipo. }

Chrome Bandwidth Stats

Chrome has an internal page that shows the amount of data transferred this session and the total amount of data transferred ever since this feature was added or you first used Chrome. Just open a new tab, paste this in the address bar: chrome://net-internals/#bandwidth and then press Enter.

Check the Original (KB) row of the table, where you can find bandwidth consumption data in kilobytes. For example, I used 40,024.5 KB since launching Chrome. The Savings values are only useful in the mobile Chrome for Android and iOS if the data saving proxy is enabled.

Savings = Original - Received

Google Play Music Mini Player and Browser Upload

There's a new experimental feature in Google Play Music Labs: it's called Google Play Music for Chrome and it lets you "control music playback with a new mini player, add your existing music collection, and download free and purchased songs without installing Music Manager."

The Labs feature only works in Chrome and it uses Native Client to bring many of the features of the Music Manager app to the browser (great news for Chrome OS users).

You first need to install the Play Music app from the Chrome Web Store.

You can enable a mini player that lets you control your music. The mini player doesn't work if you close the Play Music tab, so you still have to keep it open.

You can also upload your music directly from Chrome. Pick your folders or use the iTunes library. By default, Google will continue to monitor your folders and upload new music.

This is the "media file permissions" dialog:

I've picked my Music folder.

You can continue to use Play Music while the files are uploaded. Check the progress at the bottom of the window, in the left sidebar. Files are uploaded even if you close the Play Music tab.

If you don't have a lot of files to upload, use drag and drop. Just drag the files to the Play Music tab.

When downloading multiple files, Google used to create a ZIP archive. Now you can set a download folder and all the files are automatically downloaded to that folder.

"We built this lab using Chrome Apps and Native Client technology. Uploads, downloads and the mini player are just the start, and we are excited to push the boundaries of what's possible on the web," says Google.

{ via Google Play }

Chromecast Photowall

Photowall for Chromecast is a cool experiment that makes Chromecast more useful. It's a simple way to upload photos from multiple devices and display them in real time on the TV.

"Setting up a Photowall is easy. You'll need to have a Chromecast plugged into your TV, then you can create a Photowall from your laptop, phone or tablet. Once you're set up, you and your friends can start sending photos directly to the big screen. When you're finished, a YouTube video of your Photowall is automatically generated, which is perfect for sharing with everyone who took part," explains Google. Photowall works even if you don't have a Chromecast: it will use your computer screen.

Google also developed apps for Android and iOS. You can also upload photos from your favorite mobile browser by visiting g.co/photowall. Google even lets you tweak the photo before sending it to the TV: you can crop it, add captions and draw using the "doodle" feature.

Google Now for Almost All Desktop Chrome Users

Back in January, Google Now was available as an experiment feature in Chrome Canary. Then it was added to the other Chrome channels, but you had to manually enable it. Now this feature is rolling out to almost all Chrome users: Windows, Mac OS and Chrome OS are supported, while the support for other Linux distributions is coming later.

"Starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks, Google Now users in all languages will be able to get these notifications in all channels of Chrome. To enable this feature, simply sign in to Chrome with the same Google Account you're using for Google Now on Android or iOS," informs Google. "If you use Google Now on your mobile device, you can see certain Now cards on your desktop computer if you're signed into Chrome, including weather, sports scores, commute traffic, and event reminders cards. Some of these cards may be based on the location of your mobile device," mentions the help center article.

"If you'd rather avoid the wait, the option can be enabled immediately by visiting chrome://flags in your browser and toggling Google Now notifications to enabled," suggests The Verge. You can paste this:

chrome://flags/#enable-google-now

in the address bar, press Enter, select "Enabled" in the drop-down next to "Google Now" and click "Relaunch now" at the bottom of the window to restart the browser.

{ via +Chrome }

Chrome's Classic New Tab Page, No Longer Available

Chrome 33 brings some bad news for those who dislike the updated new tab page.

Until now, you could disable the new interface in chrome://flags: the Instant Extended API flag allowed you to do that. In Chrome 33, the flag has been removed.

Google says that "there are no plans at the moment to provide a way built into Chrome to change the new tab page. You can find a number of alternative New Tabs in the Web Store".

There's a Chrome extension that redirects the new tab page to chrome://apps and shows the apps you've installed. You can also set the new tab page to an empty page or pick any other page.

To learn how to use the updated new tab page, check this Help Center article. Recently visited pages are in the Chrome menu, apps have a dedicated page you can find in the bookmarks bar, there's also an app launcher you can use.

Enable Data Compression Proxy in Chrome for Desktop

Chrome's data compression proxy is only available for Android and iOS, but Jerzy Głowacki figured out a way to bring this feature to the desktop. Just install this extension and it enables the proxy. You can check the savings by visiting chrome://net-internals/#bandwidth and disable it by clicking the button from the toolbar.

"The extension sends all HTTP (but not HTTPS) traffic through Chrome Data Compression Proxy server, which uses SPDY protocol to speed up web browsing. Enabled state is indicated by a green icon. You can manually disable the proxy by clicking on the icon."

I've checked the code and it looks OK. It's also available here. Please note that this extension is not developed by Google, it's experimental and might not work properly for all sites.

{ Thanks, Jerzy. }

Chrome Photo Wall?

There's a weird page at chrome.com/photowall/ which only shows an input box for entering a password. The title of the page is "temp login". A photo wall is a gallery of photos, so this could be a Chrome experiment that shows your photos in an interesting way, maybe using WebGL.

Chrome.com is a domain owned by Google since 2012 and it's used for various Chrome-related experiments, games, promotions and services like Chrome Maze, Roll It, Racer, Super Sync Sports, Give a Chromebook, Good to Know.

The domain was previously used by "Chrome Systems Inc/DealerTrack, Inc. which notified customers in March that as of  September 1, 2012 they will stop using the domain name Chrome.com and use the domain name Chromedata.com instead". Some pages created by the previous owner are still indexed by Google, even if they no longer exist.

Update (March 2014): Chromecast Photowall is now live.

{ Thanks, Florian K. }

Chrome Doesn't Delete Old Extension Folders

There's something very annoying about Chrome. It now keeps all the old versions of your extensions and apps. I remember that Chrome used to only keep the current version and the previous version, just like it handles Chrome releases.

If you've installed many extensions and apps, it's likely that the Extensions folder from your Chrome profile uses many hundreds of megabytes. Some apps are pretty big now: for example, the latest version of Polycraft uses 76.6 MB. It's obvious that a single application could use 1 GB after a few updates.

Here's another example: the LastPass extensions. I've checked my profile folder and Chrome keeps 11 versions of this extension since October 2013. Total disk usage: 107 MB, instead of 9.6 MB for the latest version.

Obviously, the old versions are useless and this is a bug. There's a bug report from a Google employee here and it mentions that "the Google+ Photos app is a fairly large app (56MB) which updates frequently (weekly?). It does not appear that older versions get deleted. For the G+ photos app which takes 56MB, I had over 700MB of old versions on my drive."

Until Google fixes this bug, you can manually delete the old versions. Go to your profile folder and open the Extensions folder. Every extension and app has its own folder with a cryptic name (the extension ID), so you can open each one and delete all the subfolders except for the most recent one. For example, LastPass's folder is named hdokiejnpimakedhajhdlcegeplioahd and it has a subfolder for each version. You can sort them by name or by date and keep the most recent version (3.0.22_0).

Google Now in Chrome for Desktop

Google Now cards are available in the latest Chrome Canary build for Windows and Mac (34.0.1788). You only need to go to chrome://flags/#enable-google-now , then switch from "Default" to "Enabled" and click "Relaunch Now" at the bottom of the page to restart the browser. Chrome Canary and the stable Chrome can run at the same time, but the Canary version is updated daily, has the latest features and it's for developers and early adopters.

If you're signed into Chrome, you should see a Google Now notification and then a list of cards. "Google Now on your desktop! Stay connected to what you need to know, across all devices," informs the first card. Google Now cards are displayed using Chrome's notification interface in the Windows system tray or the Mac menu bar. Just look for the bell icon.

"If you use Google Now on your mobile device, you can see certain Now cards on your desktop computer if you're signed into Chrome, including weather, sports scores, commute traffic, and event reminders cards. Some of these cards may be based on the location of your mobile device. Google Now on Chrome shows a subset of the Now cards you see on your mobile device, which uses your device's location. You can edit your location settings (Location Reporting and Location History) on your Android or iOS device at any time," informs Google.

{ Thanks, Michael. }

Chrome's Data Compression, Now For Everyone

Chrome's data compression feature is now available for all Android and iOS users. The latest releases of Chrome for Android and iOS add this feature, which was previously limited to Chrome Beta for Android and some randomly picked users.

"When enabled, Chrome's data compression and bandwidth management can reduce data usage by up to 50% while browsing the web on Chrome for Android and iOS. This feature also enables Chrome's Safe Browsing technology which helps protect you from malicious webpages," informs Google.

This feature uses a Google proxy to compress all the pages you visit, except for HTTPS pages and the sites you visit in Chrome's incognito mode.

"When the Data Compression Proxy feature is enabled, Chrome Mobile opens a connection between your phone and one of the optimization servers running in Google's datacenters and relays all non-encrypted HTTP requests over this connection. (...) The browser-to-proxy connection runs over SSL, meaning that your browsing session is encrypted between your device and Google's servers. The proxy also performs intelligent compression and minification of HTML, JavaScript and CSS resources, which removes unnecessary whitespace, comments, and other metadata which are not essential to render the page. These optimizations, combined with mandatory gzip compression for all resources, can result in substantial bandwidth savings," informs Google. DNS lookups are performed by the proxy, while the images are converted to WebP and the resulting images are up to 80% smaller.

Chrome for iOS also adds the page translation feature, which was previously limited to Chrome for Android and desktop, while Chrome for Android lets you add to the homescreen shortcuts to any page or web app.

As usually, "these updates will be rolling out over the next few days", so don't expect to get the latest version of Mobile Chrome right away.

Chrome's Metro Mode

This is not Chrome OS, it's a new Chrome interface that's only used in Windows 8 in the Metro mode (Modern UI). "Manage multiple Chrome windows and quickly get to your favorite Chrome Apps with an integrated app launcher. On the desktop, we've updated the default styling of UI elements like form controls and scrollbars to match the sleek design of the new Chrome Metro interface," informs Google.

Google ignored the Metro design language and decided to bring the Chrome OS interface to Windows 8. You'll get an app launcher, a shelf where you can pin your favorite apps, you can add new windows, move them, minimize them, maximize them, resize them and close them.

It's a great way to promote Chromebooks. You run Chrome in an immersive environment, as if it were the only application from your computer.

You can switch between the desktop mode and the Metro mode by clicking the menu and selecting "Relaunch Chrome on the desktop/in Windows 8 mode". Relaunching Chrome on the desktop didn't work well for me: only one of the windows was properly restored. "Chrome remembers the mode you last used. For example, if you exit Chrome from your desktop, you'll automatically be in desktop mode the next time you open Chrome," explains Google.

Chrome doesn't run in Windows 8 RT, but Windows for ARM isn't very popular.

Add Supervised Users in Chrome

This is no longer limited to Chrome Beta: the latest stable Chrome release lets you add supervised users. They're just like regular Chrome users, except that they're attached to your Google account and you can block sites and check their browsing activity from a Google page. This could be used as a parental control feature and it's more useful if you have a Chromebook.

"A supervised user is a special type of Chrome user who can browse the web with guidance. Under the supervision of the manager, a supervised user can browse the web and sign in to websites. Supervised users don't need a Google Account or an email address because the manager creates a profile for the supervised user through the manager's Google Account," informs Google.

When you add an user from the settings page, make sure to enable "this is a supervised user". You need to sign in to Chrome using a Google Account to use this feature. For Chromebooks, you have to sign out, click "add user" on the lower-left corner and "Create a supervised user".

You'll see this dialog and you'll get a confirmation email.

Chrome windows associated with the new profile have a "supervised user" label next to the icon. Supervised users can't enable Chrome Sync and can't install extensions or apps from the Chrome Web Store.

You can managed supervised users from this page: https://www.google.com/settings/chrome/manage (short URL: chrome.com/manage). Manage permissions, block domains, lock or unlock Google SafeSearch, check the browsing activity. SafeSearch is turned on by default and can't be disabled by the supervised user.

If the supervised user wants to visit a site that's blocked, he'll see this message and can click "Request permission". Chrome's dashboard page will show the requests and the manager can approve them.

"Supervised User Profiles" is a beta feature, even if it's now available in the stable Chrome releases.