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Earlier this week, Chrome 111 for desktop rolled out with little fanfare but that’s not to say that this seemingly minor update doesn’t have some very useful updates under the hood. As with all milestone updates to Chrome, version 111 comes with its fair share of security updates and patches which we will get to momentarily. First, let’s take a quick look at what’s new in Chrome 111 along with some features that could arrive in the very near future.
Smoother Web App transitions
Web apps are quickly becoming the go-to choice for an increasingly large number of applications and as such, Google is working hard to make those web apps look and feel as native as possible. Regardless of how useful a web app is, a good UX is key to any application’s success. This is especially apparent when it comes to visible transitions between elements. The new View Transition API aims to make those transitions even better to create a better and easier way for developers to implement these on-screen movements.
Developers already have CSS animations and transitions at their disposal along with the Web Animation API to create a smooth app experience. The View Transition API will only add to the arsenal of tools available to make these smoother transitions between pages even more seamless.
Revoke permissions of unused sites
As part of Chrome’s ongoing security and privacy updates, Chrome 111 will now revoke permissions for sites that have not been used for two months or more. This is a practical application considering the fact that many of us have countless sites in our browser history that we have granted some form of permissions to and never navigated to that address again. This will help to mitigate the chance that a site goes rogue and attempts to compromise your browser.
Better download tracking
This feature is still behind a flag but it adds a new downloads icon that will appear in Chrome when a file is actively downloading. The icon will show at the top right where the extension icon currently lives. There are two flags for this feature. When both are enabled, the icon will now show the number of active downloads that Chrome is handling. If you’d like to give it a try, you can point your browser to chrome://flags#download-bubble and chrome://flags#download-bubble-v2 and toggle each to “enabled” to turn them on. Restart your browser and you should be good to go. I would presume that this feature could be on by default before the next major update to Chrome.
For more on these new features and some updates to the CSS color pallete in Chrome, check out this video from the Chrome Developer team.
Along with these updates, Chrome 111 arrives with a whopping 40 patches and security fixes that netted developer more than $100K in bug bounties. You can read more on these patches here. One other feature that is currently in trials could bring a wider range of capabilities to the Picture in Picture feature in Chrome. As seen in this developer blog, the PiP function is being extended to a range of elements outside of standard video. This would give web app developers the ability to pop out specific elements of a page and have them remain persistently on top of other elements on your screen. This gives off some major “widget-y” vibes and I love it. You can see the feature in action here.
That’s it for Chrome 111 but stay tuned for updates to ChromeOS as 111 has begun rolling out for select devices. We’ll be digging in to see what’s new with Google’s desktop OS and we’ll report back ASAP.
