Chrome Beta 73: Now that the stable version of Chrome 72 is out, Chrome 73 has moved to the Beta channel. While there are some improvements for Android, most of the features in the upcoming release are for desktop. Below are the new features in Chrome Beta 73.
#1 Address quick actions
Google , and editing the existing URL. This has been used behind a flag but is already enabled by default in Chrome Beta 73.
#2 Picture-in-Picture on desktop
Picture-in-picture mode for Chrome was introduced last year and essentially allows videos to play in their own small window. Unlike Android, where the feature is automatically activated when you switch to another app, on the desktop it requires user action, such as clicking a button. Additionally, Google is experimenting with a way to activate this mode automatically on desktops and so far it is available as an Original Trial in Chrome 73. Specifically, once it adds the “autopictureinpicture” attribute to a video element, it will automatically appear when the page is hidden. In simpler terms, this works the same way it always has on Android. If you have Chrome Beta 73 installed on your desktop, you can try out a demo here. It should be noted that the “Skip Ad” feature has also been added for the desktop and if you have Chrome Beta 73 you can try it out.
#3 Keyboard media controls
If you have a keyboard with media control keys, you will probably love Chrome 73, as pressing the play/pause key on your keyboard will play or pause an active video. Also, you may notice some bugs, as some custom video players are not designed to handle playback changes without a user actually pressing the button, but it should work correctly with most sites. The sites will be able to perform actions each time the «rewind/fast forward» keys are pressed, using the Media Session API, which was introduced in Chrome 57 for Android. For example, the web app of Spotify could allow you to go to the previous or next track, using your keyboard. Surely soon some sites will add support for this feature.
#4 Badges on PWAs
Another experimental feature for Chrome 73 is the ability to add a badge to an installed Progressive Web App. For example, the Twitter PWA could show a badge for unread DMs or a video conversion could show a badge when it has completed. Here we should emphasize that the representation of the badge will not look the same on every operating system.
Other features
- Progressive Web Apps that run from the desktop are allowed to autoplay video with sound.
- On Chromebooks with Android 9 Pie, when an Android app starts by playing music, Chrome will stop any video or audio players.
- Chrome will no longer allow downloads in sandboxed frames unless the user interacts with the frame.
- Stylesheets can be created dynamically using new CSSStyleSheet methods.
- Sites can quickly check whether specific HDCP DRM policies can be used.
If you are interested in downloading Chrome Beta, click here.
