Google is constantly rolling out new features and improvements for Chrome, usually outside of the actual version updates. Three features are now rolling out to the desktop Chrome browser to make it ever so slightly better.
Google Chrome has included a Safety Check feature for a few years now, which scans your browser settings and saved passwords for possible security problems. For example, it will warn you if it finds a saved password that has been compromised, or if there’s a pending update for the browser. Google says that Safety Check will now run automatically run in the background.
Most of the checks in Safety Check already did that—Chrome already checks for updates in the background, and passwords have been automatically checked for security breaches since 2019. The main change here seems to be messages that can appear in Chrome’s main menu, warning you about sites sending many notifications and other potential issues.
Google is also rolling out a memory usage indicator for tabs when you hover your mouse over them. The feature first appeared as a feature flag back in June, allowing you to check how much RAM a browser tab is using without opening Chrome’s Task Manager. If you have Memory Saver enabled in Chrome, tabs will be put to sleep after they are unused for a while, freeing that memory back up for other tasks.
Finally, if you use tab groups in Chrome, the groups can now be saved for use on other devices. Google said in a blog post, “Tab groups are a useful way to declutter and organize your tabs in Chrome, especially if you’re browsing for, say, presents from different sites. Rolling out over the next few weeks in Chrome on desktop, you’ll be able to save tab groups so you can access them on other desktop devices and easily pick your projects back up.”
The new features should be available in Chrome soon, if you don’t have them already. The tab memory and safety check features only appear to be available for Chrome on Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS, not mobile platforms.
Source: Google
