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Brave Browser starts protecting against sites snooping on your system
Brave puts an end to unauthorized website scanning of local ports
Malicious websites use all manner of tricks to worm their way into our systems, but in order for them to be most effective at their nastiness, they need to know what they're facing. That often means scanning our phones and computers, looking for open network ports and identifying the programs running on them. The data that generates can effectively "fingerprint" your device, letting the malicious site identify and track you — even if you use a browser with safeguards like an ad-blocker. So far, your best protection has been to install a third-party browser extension that blocks local port scanning, but now the Brave browser is tackling this problem head-on, by preventing websites from scanning open ports on your device in the first place.
Chrome is experimenting with the option to share your saved passwords
Chrome's password manager should be picking up some more advanced features
Google Chrome offers its own built-in password manager, but that effort has trailed behind some of its third-party competition. In recent years, though, it's been making improvements, like adding a shortcut to the password manager on Android, as well as allowing users to add notes to existing credentials. Now, we're checking out early work on what could be Chrome's next addition, with an option to share saved passwords with others.
DuckDuckGo now has its own PC browser for keeping what you do online private
The Windows beta is ready for public testing
DuckDuckGo's mission is all about user privacy. That started with its search engine, and we've seen it expand to a Chrome extension and the company's mobile browser. Now DuckDuckGo is once again pushing the boundaries of data protection, announcing the public beta of its own privacy-centric browser for Windows.
Google upgrades ChromeOS accessibility with image to text conversion for PDFs
Letting screen readers to their thing, even without alt text
For as many incredible things that our phones and computers can do, it's easy to forget that not everyone's able to interact with these systems in the same way. Google has thankfully been a trailblazer when it comes to accessibility, including making web content available to everyone. Chrome's reading mode and PDF viewer are both part of this commitment, and can be invaluable to those with visual impairments. Now a new image-to-text feature in Chrome on ChromeOS will help screen readers work with PDFs, even when images lack alt-text descriptions.
Google's got plenty of Chrome love to go around with new features for iOS
iPhone users are getting new Google Lens, Maps, Calendar, and translation goodies on Chrome
Google wants Chrome to dominate not only PCs, but also mobile devices. There's no doubt that Chrome is one of the market's leading browsers, and that's likely to continue as long as it keeps picking up new features at its current rate. If you have Chrome installed on your Android phone, you probably already have access to a number of handy features that enhance your browsing experience. For the iPhone-toting users, some of those features are rolling out to Chrome on iOS this week and in the coming months.
How to set up two-factor authentication on Amazon
Bump up your Amazon safety with its two-step verification. Here's how it all works
Two-factor authentication/verification is now so common you probably do it without thinking. This type of security asks you to confirm your identity via another channel, like sending a text code or an email. It's an easy process and a powerful defense against identity theft, which is why it pops up when you use an unfamiliar device.
Chrome’s Incognito mode gets a privacy-preserving screenshot option
You can try it out now in Chrome Canary
Read update
Screenshots are a super convenient way to remember something for later, or to share stuff with friends, but it's easy to take that kind of ubiquitous functionality for granted. Sometimes software doesn't want to play nicely, and along the way, we've seen plenty of creative workarounds for when screen captures aren't available. Now Google Chrome is taking steps to become more screenshot-friendly, as a new Canary flag enables screenshots even when browsing in Incognito mode.
Google is expanding Material You on Chrome Canary for desktop
Menu backgrounds get the colorful treatment
Google’s Material You design and dynamic theming engine made Android 12 several times more amazing than previous Android updates. Support for dynamic theming first arrived on popular Google apps, followed by hordes of third-party ones. Two years on, Google is bringing Material You theming to Chrome Canary.
What is a cookie on the web?
What are web cookies? You may know these bits of data can track you, but here's the full story
Web browser cookies taught a world of internet users that too many cookies could be a bad thing. Today, we're accustomed to seeing all sorts of popups telling us the website uses cookies and asking us what kind of cookies we want to allow on computers and mobile Android devices. Those policy popups and associated privacy concerns often give cookies a bad name but don't give these little bits of inserted data too bad a name. They can also save you time and make your favorite sites easier to use without interfering with your personal data. Let's look at the duality of cookies and how they work.
Google Chrome wants to make Memory Saver’s effect clearer
The browser is working on more visual tweaks to show inactive tabs and their memory savings
Google introduced its Memory Saver to Chrome in early 2023, but the company isn’t done improving it with subsequent Chrome releases. Once turned on, the feature automatically freezes background tabs you haven’t opened in a while, leaving them visible in your tab bar to give you quick access to reload them when needed. With Chrome Canary 116, we can look forward to some much-needed visual improvements.
Google is giving Chrome's Memory saver and media controls a visual refresh
The latest Canary build for desktop makes important info and features easier to access
This year, Google has been on a streak of sorts, adding new features and design tweaks to Chrome Canary ahead of their stable channel release as one big visual overhaul. We've also seen more functional features like Live Translate for video captions and Memory saver for resource optimization show up in earlier versions of the browser. Now, Google is refining the design for these feature dialog boxes.
Google Chrome needs to declutter and eliminate omnibox shortcuts that don’t spark joy
Tidying up that top-right corner is the need of the hour
We all recognize Google Chrome as one of the most popular web browsers on Android as well as desktop, and ease-of-use plays a huge role in maintaining the browser’s continued appeal. A clean and clutter-free UI goes a long way towards making users feel comfortable, but Chrome developers seem to have strayed from that path with the desktop release. Right now, there's just too much clutter and duplicated functionality in and around the omnibox and overflow menu. Thankfully, a major Chrome redesign is in the pipeline and Google has the opportunity to make things right.
What’s new in Google Chrome 114: Transparent navigation bar for Android
There is also some progress on the big desktop redesign launching later this year
Google has released Chrome 114 in early stable, which means that it's starting to roll out to the first few phones and desktops right now. It might take some time until it reaches your handset, but in the meantime, you can learn all about what's new in the latest Chrome release here. There are quite a few things to see, like a lot of progress towards Chrome's big 2023 redesign on desktops and some more quality-of-life improvements for all platforms.
Chrome 114 finally has a transparent navigation bar on Android
You need to switch on a flag to enjoy the glorious full-screen experience
Google introduced gesture navigation with Android 10 back in 2019. From the get-go, it was possible for app developers to make the navigation bar at the bottom transparent, showing app content behind the otherwise dead space. Fast forward to 2023, and you will still only find a handful of apps that have taken this step, leaving the best Android phones out there feeling less premium than they should. Google Chrome will soon join this handful of apps, as Chrome Beta 114 offers a flag that lets you turn your navigation bar transparent.
Google is killing Chrome Translate in old versions of the browser
You're out of luck if you're still on Chrome M95 and older
One of the most indispensable skills possessed by many of the leading web browsers is the ability to translate foreign text on a webpage into your native language. Google Chrome, for example, does this by detecting the language that the website is written in and then converting it to your preferred language. It is especially useful if you come across a website that is written in a language you don't understand. Unfortunately, if you're still using an old version of Chrome, you should consider updating to version 96 or newer in order to continue using the browser's built-in translation feature.
Silk browser tips and tricks: All the basics for Amazon Fire Tablet users
Enhance your Silk browser experience with these handy tips and tricks
Amazon Silk is an efficient web browser designed specifically for Amazon Fire tablets, Fire TV streaming devices, and Echo Show devices. Silk is a cloud-based browser that processes some of its data on Amazon's servers, which can improve performance on devices with limited resources. The browser is also designed to be power-efficient, making it ideal for devices like the Kindle Fire, which has less processing power and memory than other tablets.
Chrome's tab bar is getting an eye-catching redesign on Windows 11
Windows 11's Mica effect is apparently coming to Google's browser
Microsoft introduced the Mica effect in Windows 11 to create a visually appealing interface, adding a frosted glass-like transparency to certain UI elements such as the Start menu, taskbar, and context menus. It has also spread to first-party apps such as File Explorer, Windows Settings, and Clock, with Microsoft Edge expected to restore it in a better form in the future. Google Chrome could also pick up the same aesthetic design in the future, if a new piece of evidence spotted in Chrome Canary is any indication.
Microsoft wants Firefox to make Bing its default search engine
Not even by switching browsers will you be able to escape Bing
Historically, Microsoft's Bing has always played second fiddle to Google. Chances are that if you used it, it was because you fired up a Microsoft-made browser (Internet Explorer back in the day or Edge now) and either quickly replaced it or changed its default search engine to Google. With Microsoft diving right into the AI craze with its ChatGPT partnership, though, Bing experienced a small renaissance, and the company is riding that wave to make sure people actually start using Bing. One strategy? Microsoft might go after Firefox in an attempt to make Bing the browser's default search engine.
Chrome is making it easier for your favorite Android apps to migrate to the web
Google's browser also picks up 100+ new APIs and gets faster at AI computation
After months of anticipation, Google I/O is finally underway, and there’s a lot to unpack. High-profile stuff like Bard may capture everyone's imagination, and we've been very excited to check out the latest Google hardware, but there's lots more going on. Google's got plenty of Chrome news to share, including 100 API changes coming to the browser, easier porting of Android apps to the web, and support for faster on-device AI and ML computation.
You can soon stop Google Chrome's Memory Saver on your favorite websites
That YouTube background music tab will never go to sleep now
The fact that Chrome is the most commonly used web browser on the planet means that Google has to ensure people have an optimal experience, regardless of the device they use. For a resource intensive browser like Chrome, the Memory Saver feature introduced in February this year is rather important. Gradually, Google is making this utility more customizable. To this effect, the latest Chrome Canary has a new button to prevent Memory Saver from closing specific websites.