Enhance your browsing experience with these experimental features
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Wouldn?t it be cool if you could magically upgrade your browser with features not known to the average Chrome user?
Below are ten Chrome flags that help you to do just that.
Chrome Flags are experimental features that aren?t yet enabled by default. To enable these, see chrome://flags. The flags stated below may be in the pipeline for official release in the near future. However, as of writing, they are still in testing.
Reader Mode
Reader Mode removes unnecessary visual clutter for distraction-free reading ? highly important when so many visual elements fight for our attention. Poof, gone.
chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode
Focus Mode
Focus Mode opens the tab in a new framed window, omitting the tab strip and search bar for a cleaner interface.
chrome://flags/#focus-mode
Impulsive-Style Scroll Animations
Rebuilding their Edge platform, Microsoft has brought their natural scrolling motion to Chromium.
?The main idea is that each ?tick? of the mouse wheel tries to mimic a physical-based world where content starts moving quickly (an impulse) and then slows due to friction.? ? Microsoft
chrome://flags/#impulse-scroll-animations
Tab Groups
Tab Groups is for grouping and managing multiple tabs together, such as for different types of cheese.
chrome://flags/#tab-groups
PDF Two-Up View
PDF Two-Up View is for viewing a PDF with two pages at a time. Interesting.
chrome://flags/#pdf-two-up-view
Force Dark Mode for Web Contents
This forces all websites to render in a dark theme ? even those that don?t have one yet, such as Medium. Yes, looking at you, Medium.
chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark
Quieter Notification Permission Prompts
This is a simple feature to reduce permission prompts disrupting your flow.
chrome://flags/#quiet-notification-prompts
Tab Hover Cards
Tab Hover Cards displays the tab previews on hover. It probably comes in handy when you have over 30 tabs open and can?t read the tab titles anymore.
chrome://flags/#tab-hover-cards & chrome://flags/#tab-hover-card-images
Enable Page Sharing via QR Code
This flag allows you to share web pages with QR codes, for easily sending content to your phone. Of course, it comes with the awesome Dino mascot.
Note: As of writing, this only seemed to work on Chrome Canary.
chrome://flags/#sharing-qr-code-generator
Parallel Downloading
Chrome can establish multiple connections to download a single file in parts, resulting in an increase in download speed.
chrome://flags/#enable-parallel-downloading
Conclusion
There are many more Chrome flags that are in testing, and many more features yet to come. If you like to live on the edge, check out Chrome Canary ? the bleeding edge of the web.
Thanks for reading.