We are all fans of Google Chrome, aren’t we? One thing that is common among all of us is the thirst for hidden features. We all love finding hidden features in Chrome, but there are some experimental features not everyone is aware of. One such experimental feature is Chrome Flags. Most of you might not have heard of Chrome flags but if you have, welcome to the Geek Club. For people who have no idea what Chrome flags are, we will tell you everything you need to know and how to enable them.
Here, we have explained everything about Chrome Flags — from its definition to how to use it and what are the best Chrome Flags that you can enable on your device. You can expand the table below and move to a relevant section with ease.
- What are Chrome Flags?
- How to Enable Chrome Flags?
- Consumer-Centric Chrome Flags
- Developer-centric Chrome Flags
What are Chrome Flags?
Chrome flags are a set of experimental features and settings that are buried in Chrome for developers and tinkerers. These experimental features include functionality that Google is working on but hasn’t enabled it yet for general consumers. The feature list on Chrome flags is pretty extensive but it should interest you if you love tinkering with new features. Chrome flags let you improve your browsing performance and also lets you use new in-development features.
Before we come to how you can enable Chrome flags, it’s important to know that some of these features might be a little buggy and the changes might crash your Chrome settings and data. As Google puts it in its warning note, “your browser may delete all your data or your security and privacy could be compromised“. You can always press the “Reset” button to sort things out on Chrome on your PC.
Alternatively, you can run chrome://settings/reset in the address bar to instantly reset Chrome. So, that’s it with the warnings, here’s how you can enable Chrome flags:
3. All the advanced features have a short description below it along with the platforms they are available in. You can enable any feature you like by just hitting the “Enable” button or changing it from “Default” to “Enabled” or “Disabled”.
1. Consumer-Centric Chrome Flags
There are a ton of features and options under Chrome flags and it’s tough to know which among them would come to good use for day-to-day usage. That’s the reason we have differentiated the consumer-centric Chrome flags from the developer-centric ones.
Chrome Labs – Since you are testing Chrome Flags, it’s essential that you enable this flag to quickly enable or disable some key Chrome Flags. Chrome has added a new experimental menu on the toolbar that lets you access flags such as Reading List and Tab Scrolling. Just go to chrome://flags/#chrome-labs and turn on the flag to find a new Flags tool on the top-right corner. Note that, currently the flag is available on Chrome Beta.
Hover Cards – Hover Cards is a new way to identify and navigate through tabs. It’s especially helpful when you are dealing with lots of Chrome tabs. Basically, if you enable this flag then a preview image of the tab will show in the form of a hovercard. I am using this feature on my Chromebook and it’s absolutely great for seamless navigation.
Tab Groups – Tab Groups is again a flag for those users who are tab hoarders. It basically lets you organize tabs into visually distinct groups. For example, you can organize a group of tabs in a common color so that you can easily move to that certain group of tabs. You can assign colors based on their different set of tasks.
Extension Toolbar Menu – Earlier, Chrome extensions used to sit inside the Settings menu, but now it’s located beside the address bar. And if you are using too many extensions, Chrome becomes cluttered and you can’t really navigate properly. In such a case, you can move all the extensions into a single toolbar menu. The address bar looks clean, more effective, and has permission controls as well.
Global Media Controls – In order to make media controls on Chrome accessible, Chrome has brought a global flag that will allow you to play/pause/change tracks from a single location. If you enable the flag, you will find the toolbar on the top-right corner.
Pull to Refresh Gesture – This is one of my favorite Chrome flags in this list. You can enable this gesture on your laptop and swipe down on the trackpad to refresh the webpage. On my Chromebook, it works satisfyingly well.
Quieter Notification – We know how notifications have become almost a nuisance on Google Chrome. Almost every website abuses the notification permission and incessantly prompts a dialog box to allow notifications. However, with the Quieter Notification flag turned on, the notification prompts gets blocked completely. How awesome is that?
Enable Reader Mode – While Safari has an excellent Reader Mode, we do not have such a feature on Google Chrome. However, there is a hidden Chrome flag that lets you enable Reader mode on Chrome. You get a barebone reader mode which simplifies the web page and removes unnecessary ads. Sure, it’s not as good as Safari’s Reader Mode, but it does work.
File System API – File System API is for allowing websites to access your native file manager. However, users have found out that, after you enable this flag, websites are not able to detect the incognito mode. And that’s why this flag is important. If you want to block websites from detecting incognito mode then enable the File System API flag.
Parallel Downloading – Parallel Downloading has been in the Chrome Flags repository for a very long time. It seems Google is not working on this feature to make it part of the stable channel. Nevertheless, this flag accelerates download speed by breaking the files into smaller chunks, similar to how IDM and other download managers work.
Enable FTP – Sometimes, it must have happened that the local FTP protocol is no longer working on Chrome. If you enter an FTP URL, it directs you to the Google search results page. To avoid such cases, enable the FTP flag so that you can always access FTP locations of your smartphone or other devices.
Treat Risky Downloads – First of all, this flag is not for everyone. However, if you are introducing the internet and web browser (in this case, Chrome) to someone who is new to this whole internet world then consider enabling this flag. It prevents downloading files that can be executed on your computer like EXE, DMG, DEB, and more. Chrome does this so that amateur users don’t download malware or adware unintentionally. The flag also blocks downloads that are originating from insecure pages. In case you want to learn how to enhance Google Chrome security then head over to our linked article.
Anonymous Local IP – This is a flag for advanced users who want to protect their identity online. Chrome allows you to conceal your local IP address with multicast DNS hostnames. It modifies the IP address to small networks of hostnames to anonymize your identity. However, it only works when the webRTC framework is being followed.
Smooth Scrolling – When you have a lot of tabs open in Chrome, the experience can get a little sluggish especially while scrolling. Thanks to the “smooth scrolling” implementation, (which is still in the testing stage) you can get a smoother scrolling experience.
Automatic Spelling Correction – There are a number of spell checker extensions on Chrome but Google is testing an inbuilt spelling corrector. This feature enables automatic autocorrection while you type.
Scroll Prediction – This flag reminds me of UC Browser, which predicts where you are going to scroll or click and loads it in advance. The “Scroll Prediction” flag when enabled predicts where you would scroll to next in a web page and renders the page in advance for smoother scrolling.
2. Developer-centric Chrome Flags
We do use Chrome flags to enhance our web experience but the truth is it’s aimed at developers. Apart from the flags we just mentioned, there are some flags, which cater solely to the developers. These Chrome flags are open to everyone, so you can give it a try if you feel like experimenting. So, here are the best Chrome flags for developers:
Experimental Javascript – Developers can use experimental Javascript features using this Chrome flag. This should come in handy for developers who want their apps or websites to be up-to-date with the latest web standards.
Experimental Web Platform features – Developers can choose to use the latest experimental web platform features that are still under development using this flag.
QUIC protocol – Google has been working on the QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connection) protocol since 2012 and you can enable the experimental QUIC support with this flag. It’s basically a faster and modern way to communicate between web servers and websites. However, it works only while dealing with QUIC-enabled servers.
Advantages of Chrome Flags
We all face performance issues on Chrome while using a modestly powered PC or a low-end Android device and that’s where the advantages of Chrome flags really come to the forefront. Thanks to the various Chrome flags we mentioned above, we can bring a lot of performance improvements to our Chrome experience. The performance improvements include better page rendering, faster page & image loading, and more.
