Google released Chrome 121 for everyone running the stable version of the browser. It disables third-party cookies for 1% of users, improves Safe Browsing protection, adds a new sidebar button to the toolbar, introduces link handling for PWAs, and more. There is also a surprising set of AI-powered features, currently experimental.
What's new in Chrome 121 stable
This release includes several experimental AI-powered capabilities that will initially be available to US users of Windows and macOS builds. The "Experimental AI" section has been added to the browser's lab configuration.
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Smart Tab Grouping/Tab Organizer
There is a new Smart Tab Grouping mode, also known as Tab Organizer. This feature automatically groups open tabs that revolve around similar topics, saving you the hassle of manual sorting. Moreover, it goes the extra mile by suggesting suitable names and even emojis for the newly formed groups.
Say you have numerous tabs open with travel plans and online shopping details - this innovative addition lets you effortlessly bundle them all under the appropriate groups. You can access the grouping function with a couple of clicks from either the tab management menu or the tab's context menu.
Theme generator
Another new experimental feature a highly customizable theme generator for the browsers. With it, users can now personalize their browser design based on a user-specified text description, expressed in natural language. Imagine describing your desired theme, mood, style, and color, and letting the browser itself generate the perfect design theme for you. To use it, refer to the "Create with AI" button, located on the "Customize Chrome/Change theme" page.
Help me write
Help me write is an interactive assistant designed to assist you in generating text on any user-specified topic. This new feature allows you to effortlessly compose verbose and polite requests or comments by specifying a simple text template. By simply clicking the "Help me write" button, available in the context menu displayed for input boxes, you can make assistant generate a text that expresses your thoughts effectively and eloquently.
Support for third-party cookies, which are used for tracking user movements between websites by advertising networks, social network widgets, and web analytics systems, is disabled for 1% of browser users.
This change is part of the Privacy Sandbox initiative, which aims to find a compromise between user privacy and the tracking needs of advertising networks and sites.
The plan is to gradually disable third-party cookies and reach 100% by the third quarter of 2024. To disable third-party cookies immediately, users can use the "chrome://flags/#test-third-party-cookie-phaseout" setting.
Encrypted archive safety check
When standard browser protection is enabled (Safe Browsing > Standard protection), the browser checks the safety of downloading encrypted archives. After downloading the archive, the user is prompted for a password to decrypt it. The browser also calculates hashes from the files in the archive and sends them to Google servers to check for any malicious components.
PWA behavior
As an experiment, the behavior when clicking on links associated with installed PWA (Progressive Web Application) applications has been changed for some users. These users will now see a separate application interface or a list of applications that support the content type in the link immediately after clicking the link.
Based on the results of the experiment, a decision will be made to switch all Chrome 123 users to the new behavior or keep the old processing method where the link opens in a regular tab with a button to go to a separate application in the address bar. To test the new behavior, the "chrome://flags/#enable-user-link-capturing-pwa" setting is available.
Sidebar
The pin icon for the side panel has been removed from the sidebar header. Instead, users are encouraged to use a new Google button in the main toolbar, or access the sidebar pin options from the main menu.
Android
The Android platform version on devices with Android 12+ and a Qualcomm or ARM GPU now includes default support for the WebGPU API. This API provides a programming interface similar to Vulkan, Metal, and Direct3D 12 for GPU-side operations such as rendering and computing, as well as enables the use of a shader language.
Other
In addition to innovations and bug fixes, the new version eliminates 17 vulnerabilities. No critical problems have been identified that would allow one to bypass all levels of browser protection and execute code on the system outside the sandbox environment. As part of the program to pay cash rewards for discovering vulnerabilities for the current release, Google paid 11 awards in the amount of 31 thousand US dollars (one award of $11,000, $9,000, $6,000 and $2,000, and three awards of $1,000). The size of the 4 rewards has not yet been determined. The largest reward, amounting to 11 thousand dollars, was awarded for identifying access to already freed memory (Use-after-free) in the implementation of the WebAudio API.
Chrome 121 is available for download on the official website. Existing users will get it automatically.
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