In the dark, dank, early days of Android, sending content from your phone to your desktop required either a third-party tool like Pushbullet or Google's Chrome to Phone and companion Chrome to Mobile extension. Thankfully Chrome switched to a convenient "tab sync" multi-device history that allows you to share sites across devices easily. Even so, it's not the most direct system, and according to Chrome Story, a "self share" feature that provides a more obvious workflow may be coming to Chrome. XDA has also spotted another upcoming change which censors the content in media notifications on Android in Incognito Mode.

The change request for the "self share" feature flag hasn't been merged in just yet, and we don't really know what it might end up looking like. However, the functionality is described in an informal message between developers attached to the changelog: "I put together a quick feature flag to start working on a prototype for sharing urls between mobile and desktop chrome." The flag description found by Chrome Story elsewhere in the Gerrit also confirms: "Allows users to post tabs from Android devices to allow other synced computer to reopen those same."

We aren't sure what the relationship between this feature and the "Continue reading in Chrome" functionality coming to Chromebooks might be, but Chrome Story believes it will at least behave differently with a more linear workflow.

The media notification changes spotted by XDA are an Android-only affair, but they're a logical addition. As it stands, media notifications for content playback that originate from an Incognito tab display a whole host of metadata like video/audio title, URL, artist/channel, a background image, etc. With the proposed change, media playback notifications coming from Incognito windows will be stripped of all that info, and merely state that "A site is playing media" with the playback controls.

Incognito media notifications in Stable channel (left) and Canary (right).

This change has already made its way into Chrome Canary, so it should be rolling out to other releases as versions progress.

Source: Chromium Gerrit (1), (2)

Via: Chrome Story, XDA Developers