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Chrome is about to be more forgiving with accidentally closing your tabs
An upcoming Chrome change instantly loads recently closed tabs
We've all made that annoying mistake of accidentally closing our Chrome browser tabs and windows. It's especially a hassle to wait for Chrome to reload them — it takes even longer depending on your network and how heavy the webpages are. Accidental closers won't have to grieve much longer, as Google is working on a nifty "magic trick" to remove the time spent waiting for Chrome to reload your tabs.
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If you're like me using an Android device, you probably browse the web with Chrome because it exists in plain sight and does the job you want it to do (and if you're not me, we've got an article for you). What it doesn't do a good job of, though, is telling you just how much stuff the sites you visit are caching into your phone — which will be particularly stressful for those surviving on 32GB, 16GB, or even 8GB disks. Fortunately, you can do something about it.
When you navigate to a new page in a web browser, the previous page you had open is usually discarded from your computer's memory. There might be cached images and other data left over, but if you press back, your browser has to load most of the page again. Google Chrome's developers are experimenting with a new 'back/forward cache' that would make loading the previous page instant.
The list of small things that are wrong with Spotify seems to get longer instead of shorter with passing time. But today, we're opening your eyes to a small improvement that happened in the last few weeks. Spotify added storage management inside its settings and now finally lets you delete cache without removing your offline downloads too.
There are a handful of Google services that virtually everyone uses, and Google Photos has managed to squeeze into that select group. Over the two years it's been out, Photos has accumulated over 500 million users as of May 2017. Although the service still isn't perfect, it's getting there. The latest update enables watched videos to be cached so that they won't use up more data when replayed.
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Loading up a website without a connection established is a real shame. Instead of the information you were looking for, Chrome shows you a dinosaur and an error message. You're left sitting there, out of luck.
It looks like the biggest leak of the Play Store's soon-to-launch gift cards may be coming from Google itself. A support page showed up in search indices (that has now been pulled) which confirms the cards will be US-only at launch and will come in $10, $15, $25, and $50 increments. Through some Google-fu, we've also learned your Google Play balance will have a $2000 limit and cannot be used on subscriptions or devices. So, sorry about your plans to buy a hundred $50 gift cards and then buy 25 Nexus 7s. That's forbidden.
Having your app unceremoniously pulled from the Market just a few short hours after it launches can certainly be discouraging, but the developers behind Kongregate Arcade didn't let that stop them from trying again.
After Andy Rubin showed off a Honeycomb-running Motorola tablet, he proceeded to demo the latest version of Google Maps. The update promises a 3D viewing mode, compass orientation, and offline caching of maps. But, perhaps best of all, Rubin claimed that "it'll be on cellphones in a matter of days."
Yesterday, Engadget got some hands-on time with the brand new HTC Sense upgrade that will debut on the Desire HD and the Desire Z. It will support all kinds of crazy stuff we've been waiting for like remote wiping, phone location, and backing up to and restoring data from HTCSense.com. Another cool feature is map pre-caching, which means that the phone will have pre-loaded maps on it.