How to Enable Our Favorite Features in Chrome 78 Right Now
The current version of Chrome Canary (browser version 78) has a number of fun features that are worth exploring or knowing, at least if you’d rather play around with them when they arrive in the more stable version of the browser. …
Say goodbye to unnecessary context menu options
Let’s try an experiment. Right click any tab at the top of the regular Chrome browser. See that big, beefy context menu and 11 options – in my browser at least – that you can choose from? Anyway, when was the last time you actually used this method to open a new tab?
If the Chrome developers say, then in Chrome 78 these parameters are significantly curtailed. In the Canary browser version, right clicking on a tab comes from this:
To that:
While this is not the biggest change, it at least shows that browser developers strive to keep their user interface concise and tight-fisted. (You might be able to achieve more by making some customizations of your own.)
Find out if your passwords have gone bad
While it wasn’t in the version of Chrome Canary I’m using – at least I haven’t seen it – reports have shown that Google will automatically bake its Password Checkup extension in Chrome 78 . If you want to give it a try, you can download the extension right now. When you enter your username and password on a website, Google will alert you if they have appeared in any data breach. If so, then it’s time to change your credentials.
And no, Google doesn’t collect your passwords:
“The password check was created with confidentiality in mind. It never shares any identifying information about your accounts, passwords or device. We do provide anonymous information about the number of searches that find insecure credentials, whether the alert triggers a password change, and the domain used to improve site coverage. ”
You Can’t Get Out of Dark Mode
If you are browsing the web in Chrome dark mode and the particular site you like only has an annoyingly bright theme, you can now customize your browser to create your own dark theme for that site. So, for example:
It becomes something like this:
To enable this feature, enter chrome://flags in the address bar and press Enter. Find “Force Dark Mode” and enable the option:
You can play around with more specific settings to fine tune how Chrome creates dark mode for your favorite sites. I find it easiest to just use Enable and be done with it – you don’t have to spend too much time making everything dark and dull.
Create your own Chrome theme
If you want to customize Chrome, but aren’t happy with the other themes you’ve seen, you can create your own in Chrome 78. First, type chrome://flags in the address bar and press Enter. Find “ntp version 2 configuration menu” and enable the option:
Then do the same for Chrome Color Menu and Chrome Color Menu Color Picker.
Restart your browser, open a new tab and click the “Customize” button in the lower right corner. Now you can customize the browser “color and theme”, which looks like this:
You can customize the display of shortcuts on new tab pages (if at all):
Finally, you can choose which background you want to look at when you open a new tab, and even change them daily if you choose one of the options recommended by Google: