Chrome 111 is out, makes possible to open any website in PiP mode

Google has released the Chrome 111 web browser. The key changes in this release are an updated UI of Privacy Sandbox, a new data sync welcome page, and improvements to the updater. It also adds experimental Document Picture in Picture APIs to open traditional HTML content in picture-in-picture mode, not just video.

What's new in Chrome 111

Privacy Sandbox

Chrome 111 comes with the updated UI for the Privacy Sandbox initiative.  Privacy Sandbox uses categories of user interests instead of cookies to track groups of users with similar interests without identifying individual users.

The new UI explains some details about the Privacy Sandbox features. It also allows opening a settings page where the user can configure what the browser shares with ad networks.

Data Sync

Chrome 111 includes a new welcome page for the Sync feature. It shows information about benefits of enabling sync for settings, history, bookmarks, auto-completion databases and other data between your Chrome browsers.

DNS Resolver

On Linux and Android platforms, name resolution operations are moved from an isolated network process to a non-isolated browser process. Developers has made this change is DNS  because it is impossible to implement some sandbox restrictions that apply to other network services outside of the browser process.

Other changes

• Chrome 111 now supports automatic sign-in to Microsoft's services (Azure AD SSO) using account information from Microsoft Windows.
• The built-in updater now handles updates for the latest 12 versions of the browser on Windows and macOS.
• Using the Payment Handler API, which simplifies integration with existing payment systems, now requires an explicit definition of the source of downloaded data by specifying the domains to which requests are sent in the connect-src (Content-Security-Policy) CSP parameter.
• Added an experimental (origin trial) Document Picture in Picture API to open arbitrary HTML content in picture-in-picture mode, not just video. Unlike opening a window via the window.open() call, the new API creates always-on-top windows that do not remain after the original tab is closed. They do not support navigation, and cannot explicitly specify the position on the screen.
• Various improvements and bugfixes.

In addition to innovations and bug fixes, Chrome 111 fixes 40 vulnerabilities. Some of them vulnerabilities were found with help of automated testing tools AddressSanitizer, MemorySanitizer, Control Flow Integrity, LibFuzzer and AFL.

There are no critical issues that allow bypassing that allow executing code or leave the sandbox environment.

As rewards for the discovery of vulnerabilities for the current release, Google paid 24 awards in the amount of 92 thousand US dollars (one award of $15,000 and $4,000, two awards of $10,000 and $700, three awards of $5,000, $2,000 and $1,000, five $3,000 awards).

Existing Chrome users will get the update automatically. Others can download it from this website. Finally, there is also an MSI package (full offline installer). It targets customers that deploy the browser in their enterprise environment, and doesn't support automatic updates.