Support our independent tech coverage. Chrome Unboxed is written by real people, for real people—not search algorithms. Join Chrome Unboxed Plus for just $2 a month to get an ad-free experience, access to our private Discord, and more. Learn more about membership here.
START FREE TRIAL (MONTHLY)START FREE TRIAL (ANNUAL)
The Chrome team has announced the release of version 59 of the Chrome browser for desktop. The update includes Windows, Mac and Linux devices and should be hitting devices over the next few days.
For all desktop users, the Chrome settings have been updated to Google’s Material Design for a cleaner look and better user experience.
Mac users can now expect to start seeing native notifications from the Chrome browser as developers migrate their apps to the new notification API.
Another big update for Chrome is the new “Headless Chrome” feature. Available now for Mac and Linux (Windows coming soon), Headless Chrome allows users to:
run the Chrome browser in a headless environment. Essentially, running Chrome without chrome!
Google Engineer, Eric Bidelman
If you’re like me this could be way over your head. If this feature is something you have been looking forward to or would like to learn more about, you can read all the details in Eric’s Headless Chrome update here.
As with each update there are a number of security patches, bug fixes and enhancements. Many of which came with some rewards for the developers involved. You can find out more about the bounties at the Chrome Release Blog.
The release of Chrome 59 is roughly a week behind the anticipated calendar date of May 28th which is not unusual. In the coming days/week we should see the release of Chrome 59 for Android followed by Chrome OS 59. We’re still keeping our fingers crossed that we will witness the large-scale roll-out of the Play Store and maybe even Nougat for more devices.
