10 most useful Google Chrome tricks that few people know about

Chrome has consistently dominated among browsers – by the end of 2021, it occupies almost 65% of the market. So, most likely you came here through the browser from Google.

However, not everyone knows about the secret chips that Chrome is stuffed with – a lot of interesting things are hiding from the mass user . You can view the list of hidden functions and enable the necessary ones at chrome: // flags (opened through the address bar of the browser).

What it is? These are features that are under testing and have not yet been officially added to Chrome , but have already passed the initial debugging and added to the browser. To enable – set Enabled (instead of Disabled) opposite the desired “flag”. After that, the Relaunch button will appear at the bottom to restart the browser – click, and the enabled function can be used.

The full list of flags is very long, and not all of them are really useful. Consider the most needed of the fact that the availability of in the middle of December I 2021.

Parallel loading

Flag address : chrome: // flags / # enable-parallel-downloading

Increases the speed of downloading files. How it works: Chrome creates several connections to the server, simultaneously downloads the file piece by piece through them, and then “collects” it back.

QR code instead of URL

This function has already been added to the usual functionality of the browser, you do not need to include anything anywhere, but many do not know about it yet.

What it gives: instead of the long links to some page you can generate it in the QR- code, and zaskrinshotit silt and download the result . png . And only then we send the QR to whoever needs it, add it or print it.

To generate the code of any page, click on the right edge of the address bar:

Reading mode

Flag address : chrome: // flags / # enable-reader-mode

In this mode, all blocks on the page are disabled – advertising, pop-up navigation elements – except for the main content, which becomes much easier to concentrate on.

Smooth scrolling

Flag address : chrome: // flags / # smooth-scrolling

One of the disadvantages of Chrome, for which it is often criticized , citing Firefox as an example, is not always smooth page scrolling. And the developers are already working on this problem. True, after turning on the function, the difference will not be noticeable on all pages, but perhaps it will help someone.

Android Reading List

Flag address : chrome: // flags / # read-later

Opens the Reading List (a place where you can quickly add pages you want to visit later). It already works on desktops and iOS, and is now being tested for Android.

Chromecast

Already implemented “flag” that allows you to broadcast the content of browser pages from a PC or smartphone on the TV screen. These can be videos or tabs with text.

To start broadcasting – right-click anywhere on the desired tab, select “Broadcast”, and specify exactly where to broadcast the content.

Reset

It happens that the browser starts to slow down for unknown reasons, and simply closing / opening does not help. In this case, a full reset and disable extensions should help. Bookmarks, entered passwords and history will remain.

This is done here :

Tab grouper

An already implemented and very useful thing – tabs in Chrome can be combined into groups, and each group can be given its own name and color. For example, this way you can collect open tabs with news, or with information on work. To add, right-click on the tab, and select “Add tab to group”.

TO LEFT button Play / Pause

A useful feature primarily for those who open a lot of pages with music or video, and get confused about them. The button allows you to quickly control playback and go to tabs where some content is running.

Appears directly on the control panel when music / video is playing:

Improving page loading speed

Flag address : chrome: // flags / # enable-quic

Nowadays, the long-existing TCP / IP protocol is used for web surfing , created half a century ago . Google released its modern replacement, QUIC, which is faster, more error-resistant, and includes built-in encryption. However, the entire Internet cannot be quickly transferred to the new protocol, and it was only in May of this year that it was approved as an official standard and began to be applied. If you enable this “flag”, Chrome will start working through the QUIC protocol and sites will start to open a little faster.