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Hidden And Functional Flags Of The Android Version Of Google Chrome

Hidden And Functional Flags Of The Android Version Of Google Chrome

The Chrome Android Application Has Practical And, At The Same Time, Completely Hidden Features You Can Use To Turn Web Browsing With Your Smartphone Into An Interesting Experience.

Today, Google Chrome is undoubtedly one of the most popular and widely used web and mobile browsers. This browser is offered as default in most Android phones and provides the user with the possibility of fast and hassle-free online searching. This application has many hidden features for Android users, whose discovery can quickly improve the web browsing experience.

In this article, we will introduce some of these features and how to use them, but before addressing this issue, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that all the settings we will discuss in the following are part of the Chrome test system (Flag).

Technically, they are not yet fully developed for the general public, and some are still in the experimental stageFlags in the Chrome browser are practical features that are not enabled by default, and to enable them, you need to go to chrome://flags and activate each one manually.

Chrome flags

Flags and features introduced below may be officially introduced in the not-so-distant future, but they are now in the experimental stage.

These flags are intended for users who want to look at Chrome’s experimental features before the public. Since they’re still in development, they’re constantly changing, so some of the settings listed here may conflict with what I’ve described. Already, look different, or even disappear in the not-so-distant future.

Smarter Screenshot

For many of us, it has happened many times that we want to share a screenshot with someone, and often there is information in these screenshots, such as a particular area of ​​a web page or a part of a text that we want to draw the other party’s attention to.

Although the default Android screenshot editor makes it easy for the user to write on any screenshot and add a line or circle, there is an easier way to grab the other person’s attention. You can define a neat box or process with a professional look or a flash in a specific part to share the desired Screenshot with the changes you want without interruption and delay; For this, it is enough to go through the following steps from Chrome://flags address:

  • Type the term Screenshots in the search box and select the title Screenshots for Android V2. Change the settings of this feature from Disabled to Enabled, and tap on the blue Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen.

Flag screenshot 1

  • After restarting the browser, open a web page, any page, and select Share from the three-dot menu in the upper right corner of Chrome; Now, by touching the word Screenshot that appears in the small panel at the bottom of the screen, a tool called Shape is available to the user to make changes. With the help of this tool, you can specify the sections you want to share with any box, circle, or arrow in the desired color.

Flag screenshot 2

Unlimited screenshots

One of the hidden features in the flagship version of Android Chrome allows the user to take screenshots of any screen in any mode. When it comes to screenshots, what may annoy the user is the limitation of taking screenshots in Chrome‘s incognito mode. Even if you can take a screenshot from Chrome’s incognito mode, the image output is still black and white without content. To use this feature at Chrome://flags, follow the steps below:

Incognito flag

Type the term Incognito in the search box and select a feature called Incognito Screenshot; Change its settings from Default to Enabled and tap the Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen. Now you can safely take a screenshot of the content of Chrome browser’s incognito mode whenever you want.

Smarter storage of content

The flag we introduce in this section is an intelligent system for regularly saving content directly in your Android browser, reminding you to read them if you forget. If you always have a lot of open tabs in your Chrome browser and you want to postpone reading some of them to another time, this feature will come in handy. To use this feature, type read later in the chrome://flags search field.

Read later flag

Find a feature called Reading List and change its settings from Default to Enabled (with app menu item). Then find the next part, Read the later reminder notification with the same results, and change its settings to Enabled.

The second read later flag

Finally, tap on the Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen; Now, when the Chrome browser reloads, you can open any article on any website you like. Tap on the three-dot menu icon in the upper right corner of Chrome and select Add to a reading list to save that article to read at a later time in the Bookmarks section.

If you don’t read the article within a week, Chrome will remind you after a week that you have saved an article for reading; This feature also makes saved essays automatically available for offline reading.

Smart dark theme

The number of fans of the dark theme among Android users is not tiny, and many of us prefer to use this mode, especially at the end of the day or in a dimly lit environment; however, changing the phone’s theme from light to dark is not necessarily applied automatically to all websites, and some of them remain bright even with the dark theme enabled and did not match the soft mood that other parts of Android offer. The feature that we introduce below is a solution to solve this inconsistency.

Dark mode flag

Again, in the search field of the address Chrome://flags, type Dark and find a function called Darken websites checkbox in the themes setting and change its settings from Default to Enabled. After relaunching and restarting the Chrome browser, open any other website, and it will magically appear with a dark theme.

Add an emoji

Another feature that can be seen among Chrome flags is the ability to add an emoji on the Screenshot and turn it into a GIF file; This feature and adding a reaction to each image for more effect can help better to convey the content to the recipient of that file. To use it, type the word Reactions in Chrome://flags address and select a feature called (Lightweight Reactions (Android).

Flag reaction one

After activating this feature and restarting the browser, go to any website you like, select the Share option in the main menu of Chrome, and tap on the new Add emotion feature. Select the emoji you want and then use your fingers to move, resize, and even duplicate it.

Flag reaction two

Next, touch the tick icon in the lower right corner of the screen and save the output as a GIF file or share it with someone else.

Increasing the speed of web browsing

One of the hidden features of the Android version of the Chrome browser can improve the loading of web pages by about 5% when browsing the web. To use this feature, follow the steps below:

Speed ​​up flag

In the Chrome browser application, go to chrome://flags and type Experimental QUIC protocol in the search field. After selecting and enabling it, a feature with this name will appear and close and restart your browser. Now you will notice faster loading pages while browsing the web. In addition, if you use YouTube while this feature is active, the buffers will be 30% less.

Smooth scrolling

The possibility of smooth scrolling is a feature that makes scrolling web pages and navigation in these pages a smoother process for the user and conveys the feeling to the user that the speed of the browser is faster when surfing the web. Of course, this feature does not affect the performance of very slow browsers and may only make it a little smoother.

Smooth scrolling flag

In the Chrome://flags address bar, type Smooth; Select Smooth Scrolling and enable it (Enabled), and restart the browser to benefit from smooth scrolling.

Parallel download for higher speed

Another hidden and practical feature of the Android version of the Chrome browser is a flag that increases the download speed in the browser. By providing a parallel download for Chrome, this flag divides the received file into different parts and downloads them simultaneously; Of course, the performance of the similar download flag still depends on the user’s network speed, and miracles should not be expected from it.

Parallel download flag

To use this feature, type Parallel in the Chrome://flags search field and enjoy faster download speeds after activating and restarting the Chrome browser.

Checking the active flags and disabling them

Perhaps one of the problems with Chrome browser flags is that it is not easy to determine which flags are active. Most active banners can be found at the top of the Chrome://flags homepage, but there is no easy way to determine the status of others.

If you haven’t changed the state of the flag, it is most likely disabled, and if you encounter problems with the performance of the Chrome browser by activating the banner, you can return it to the default state or disable it. If you want to cancel all the changes made in the Flags section, there is a button at the top of this page to reset all the changes (Reset all).