What Chrome’s Built-in Plugins Actually Do
Chrome doesn’t really rely on plugins, but when you first download Chrome it already comes packaged with five of them. How-To Geek explains what the hell they actually do.
If you’ve ever visited your chrome://plugins page, you’ve probably seen some weird titles like Widevine Content Decryption Module and wondered what exactly they do (and if they can be disabled). So, here are five plugins packaged in Chrome and what they do:
- Widevine Content Decryption Module : Allows Chrome to play DRM-protected HTML5 video and audio just like on Netflix.
- Native Client : This allows developers to run C or C ++ code on a website. For the most part, this is really only used for some of the more complex apps and games in the Chrome Web Store.
- Adobe Flash : This is Adobe Flash, but slightly tweaked for Google Chrome.
- Chrome Remote Desktop Viewer : This is the Chrome Remote Desktop application you need to access your computer remotely. The plugin does nothing until you activate it.
- Chrome PDF Viewer: This speaks for itself: it is a plugin that allows you to read PDF files.
That’s all. You can always disable any of them , but you will lose functionality as expected. As always, if you see anything strange on your plugins page, be sure to research it a little more to make sure nothing is causing the problem.
Google Chrome Includes 5 Browser Plugins And Here’s What They Do | How-To Geek