Another month, another stable Chrome release. Google recently sped up its release cycle from six weeks to a mind-boggling four weeks, and while it does feel like the company is adding fewer updates with each new browser version, this month's Chrome 96 does bring a few select improvements, particularly to the desktop variant.
Backward-forward cache for desktop
Navigating back and forth via the browser buttons can sometimes feel a little slow, especially when you're dealing with resource-hogging websites. Chrome 96 is making things better for desktop users using a new cache that automatically saves sites you recently navigated to on your computer. While this probably uses even more of your RAM, it also saves you valuable time you'd otherwise spent waiting when navigating back and forth between websites. While it should speed up things generally, do note that not all websites are 100% compatible with this.
If the functionality seems familiar, it's because Google already brought it to mobile Chrome 86 more than a year ago.
Progressive web apps improvements for desktops
Progressive web apps (PWAs) increasingly feel like regular apps, but there are still smaller bits and pieces that separate regular system applications from their web counterparts. On desktops, Google is improving the situation further by giving web apps the option to register themselves as handlers of custom URLs. In practice, that means that URLs for web apps like Twitter should more reliably open in the Twitter PWA rather than in your browser. Google is also making developers' lives simpler by switching over to Mozilla's method for naming and registering web apps with desktop operating systems.
Per-site dark theme option
As spotted by Redditor Leopeva64-2, Google has added a new in-development feature to this stable release. When you activate the chrome://flags/#darken-websites-checkbox-in-themes-setting flag, you'll find a new checkbox in the overflow menu when you use your system-wide dark mode, allowing you to toggle on Chrome's custom dark theme feature on a per-site basis.
Note that this is different from a website's own dark theme. The toggle works for each and every webpage, but it's possible that some content might look broken or illegible, which is usually not the case when a site offers a well-implemented native dark mode.
Accessibility site zoom
Another improvement for mobile Chrome comes in the form of accessibility site zoom. This clunky denominator describes the option to set a page zoom level on a site-by-site basis, much like you can do on desktop by using the Zoom option in Chrome's three-dot menu in the top right corner. On Android, the feature is still hidden behind a flag, though: chrome:flags#enable-accessibility-page-zoom.
Once it's enabled, you can tap the lock icon (or the arrow) to the left of the URL to change the zoom level you prefer, without having to meddle with the global default in Chrome's settings.
Further changes
- Preserve PNG metadata: In the past, Chrome automatically sanitized PNG files pasted from the system clipboard, which could lead to unintended behavior, especially since other browsers don't do this. In Chrome 96, this practice ends.
- New tab Photos memories: Chrome 96 for desktop brings a flag that lets you enable Photos memories on your new tab page. Read more about this here.
As always, you can either wait for Google to push the update to your phone via the Play Store, but it's also available over at APK Mirror if you're eager to try things out.
Thanks: Mikhail