Category Archives: Google Chrome Blog

The latest news from the Google Chrome team

Better password protections in Chrome

Many of us have encountered malware, heard of data breaches, or even been a victim of phishing, where a site tries to scam you into entering your passwords and other sensitive information. With all this considered, data security has become a top concern for many people worldwide. Chrome has safety protections built in, and now we're expanding those protections further.

Chrome warns when your password has been stolen

When you type your credentials into a website, Chrome will now warn you if your username and password have been compromised in a data breach on some site or app. It will suggest that you change them everywhere they were used.

Keyword Blog - breach detection.png — If your credentials were compromised, we recommend to change them immediately.

Google first introduced this technology early this year as the Password Checkup extension. In October it became a part of the Password Checkup in your Google Account, where you can conduct a scan of your saved passwords anytime. And now it has evolved to offer warnings as you browse the web in Chrome.

You can control it in Chrome Settings under Sync and Google Services. For now, we’re gradually rolling this out for everyone signed in to Chrome as a part of our Safe Browsing protections.

Phishing protection in real time

Google’s Safe Browsing maintains an ever-growing list of unsafe sites on the web and shares this information with webmasters, or other browsers, to make the web more secure. The list refreshes every 30 minutes, protecting 4 billion devices every day against all kinds of security threats, including phishing.

Safe Browsing list has been capturing an increasing number of phishing sites.

However, some phishing sites slip through that 30-minute window, either by quickly switching domains or by hiding from our crawlers. Chrome now offers real-time phishing protections on desktop, which warn you when visiting malicious sites in 30 percent more cases. Initially we will roll out this protection to everyone with the “Make searches and browsing better” setting enabled in Chrome.

Expanding predictive phishing protections

If you're signed in to Chrome and have Sync enabled, predictive phishing protection warns you if you enter your Google Account password into a site that we suspect of phishing. This protection has been in place since 2017, and today we’re expanding the feature further.

Now we'll be protecting your Google Account password when you sign in to Chrome, even if Sync is not enabled. In addition, this feature will now work for all the passwords you store in Chrome’s password manager. Hundreds of millions more users will now benefit from the new warnings.

Keyword Blog - phishing.png — Chrome will show this warning when a user enters their Google Account password into a phishing page.

Sharing your device? Now it’s easier to tell whose Chrome profile you’re using

We realize that many people share their computers or use multiple profiles. To make sure you always know which profile you’re currently using—for example, when creating and saving passwords with Chrome’s password manager—we’ve improved the way your profile is featured.

On desktop, you’ll see a new visual representation of the profile you’re currently using, so you can be sure you are saving your passwords to the right profile. This is a visual update and won’t change your current Sync settings. We’ve also updated the look of the profile menu itself: it now allows for easier switching and clearly shows if you are signed in to Chrome or not.

From Munich with love

Many of these technologies were developed at the Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC), a hub of privacy and security product experts and engineers based in Munich, which opened last May. GSEC is home to the engineering teams who build many of the safety features into the Chrome browser. We’ll continue to invest in our teams worldwide to deliver the safest personal browser experience to everyone, and we look forward to bringing more new features to strengthen the privacy and security of Chrome in 2020.

All these features will be rolled out gradually over the next few weeks. Interested in how they work? You can learn more on Google Security blog.

Source: Google Chrome

Using the web to help young people find work

South Africa has the world’s highest recorded youth unemployment rate. Many young people are unable to access job opportunities due to a lack of financial resources and necessary work experience. Allan van der Muelen, the co-founder of start-up Zlto, is changing this.

Zlto is a web-based digital rewards platform that incentivizes young people to gain work experience by volunteering in the community. Users build a digital resume by uploading completed work assignments, showing both their impact on the project and the skills they gained while completing the task. For each project they also earn Zlto, a digital currency that can be spent on a range of items, like food, clothing, mobile data and transportation, thanks to collaborations with national retail partners.

“I work with young people to show them that they do have choices and the Web is giving them access to even more,” he says. In 2018, Zlto won the Google Impact Challenge and more recently started working with Chrome engineers to streamline their web app.

Zlto on desktop — Zlto’s user dashboard is the portal to volunteer opportunities and provides a progress summary.

People access Zlto through devices with limited capabilities and with limited data and connections. So providing them with instant access to the platform is critical to the company’s success. By building on the web, the Zlto team was able to make the app widely accessible. A typical Zlto user accesses their web app three times a day, so it’s critical that their experience is reliable. The Zlto team uses modern web technologies to ensure the app is responsive and reliable, and they use tools including Google’s Lighthouse to monitor the app’s performance and make instant fixes.

Zlto is having a notable impact in the Cape Town Flats, securing permanent work for more than 2,300 young people in the last 12 months; there are 36,000 volunteers working with more than 1.2 million people in the community. The team is now piloting the launch of Zlto in Tanzania as well as the United Kingdom, working with the Newbigin House charity in support of asylum seekers and other individuals.

Source: Google Chrome

Using AI to give people who are blind the “full picture”

Everything that makes up the web—text, images, video and audio—can be easily discovered. Many people who are blind or have low vision rely on screen readers to make the content of web pages accessible through spoken feedback or braille.

For images and graphics, screen readers rely on descriptions created by developers and web authors, which are usually referred to as “alt text” or “alt attributes” in the code. However, there are millions of online images without any description, leading screen readers to say “image,” “unlabeled graphic,” or a lengthy, unhelpful reading of the image’s file name. When a page contains images without descriptions, people who are blind may not get all of the information conveyed, or even worse, it may make the site totally unusable for them. To improve that experience, we’ve built an automatic image description feature called Get Image Descriptions from Google. When a screen reader encounters an image or graphic without a description, Chrome will create one.

Image descriptions automatically generated by a computer aren't as good as those written by a human who can include additional context, but they can be accurate and helpful. An image description might help a blind person read a restaurant menu, or better understand what their friends are posting on social media.

If someone using a screen reader chooses to opt in through Settings, an unlabeled image on Chrome is sent securely to a Google server running machine learning software. The technology aggregates data from multiple machine-learning models. Some models look for text in the image, including signs, labels, and handwritten words. Other models look for objects they've been trained to recognize—like a pencil, a tree, a person wearing a business suit, or a helicopter. The most sophisticated model can describe the main idea of an image using a complete sentence.

The description is evaluated for accuracy and valuable information: Does the annotation describe the image well? Is the description useful? Based on whether the annotation meets that criteria, the machine learning model determines what should be shown to the person, if anything. We’ll only provide a description if we have reasonable confidence it's correct. If any of our models indicate the results may be inaccurate or misleading, we err on the side of giving a simpler answer, or nothing at all.

Here are a couple of examples of the actual descriptions generated by Chrome when used with a screen reader.

Pineapples, bananas and coconuts — Machine-generated description for this image: "Appears to be: Fruits and vegetables at the market."

Man playing guitar on gray sofa — Machine-generated description for this image: "Appears to be: Person playing guitar on the sofa."

Over the past few months of testing, we’ve created more than 10 million descriptions with hundreds of thousands being added every day. The feature is available in English, but we plan to add more languages soon. Image descriptions in Chrome are not meant to replace diligent and responsible web authoring; we always encourage developers and web authors to follow best practices and provide image descriptions on their sites. But we hope that this feature is a step toward making the web more accessible to everyone.

Source: Google Chrome

6 Chromebook keyboard shortcuts that save time

Chrome Browser keyboard shortcuts (which also work on Chromebook) can be major timesavers. Keyboard shortcuts, also called “hot keys,” help you speed up a wide variety of tasks, including taking a screenshot, locking your screen, and even (fittingly) viewing all keyboard shortcuts—just click Ctrl + Alt + /.

These six Chromebook keyboard shortcuts are among the most popular shortcuts that can help you do more in less time. While these tips are especially helpful for those of you who use Chromebooks at work, you might find they help you get things done faster, regardless of whether you're at work or home.

1. Dock browser windows.
Digging into projects often requires opening more than one browser window—also called a “browser instance”—at a time. This can be an effective way to organize work. You can open one browser instance for dashboards, one for apps, another for Gmail, a third for Google Docs you’re working on, and, perhaps, one for music.

If you find yourself going back and forth between two browser instances, it’s a good idea to “dock” your screens, or anchor them in place on your screen so they don’t move around. This way, you can access two screens side-by-side. Hit Alt + ] to dock one browser instance to the left and Alt + [ to dock the other browser instance to the right.

2. Switch between browser instances or browser tabs.
Docking browser instances is one way to work more efficiently when you’re juggling projects. Another strategy is to quickly switch between what you have open. Within each browser instance, it’s not uncommon to have multiple tabs open on your screen. People do this often when they’re searching the web or working in different apps, like Gmail or Drive. You can use keyboard shortcuts to switch between browser instances and between tabs.

Click Alt + tab to switch between the two most recent browser instances. Continue to hold Alt after pressing tab and you’ll get a tiled view of all of your open browser instances. Click Ctrl + tab (no point and click necessary) to navigate between browser tabs.

3. Recover closed tabs.
If you accidentally close Chrome, there’s no need to worry. Simply hit Ctrl + Shift + T and your most recently closed tab (or browser instance) comes right back. If you closed more than one, just hit that combination of keys again, and Chrome will keep restoring.

4. Use Caps Lock.
One of the first things you might notice when you switch to Chrome OS is that there’s no Caps Lock key. But let’s face it, sometimes you need to shout your enthusiasm (COOKIES IN THE BREAKROOM!). In such instances, Caps Lock is just a keyboard shortcut away.

Editing Microsoft Office files on a Chromebook is the cat’s meow. Follow the instructions below.

Use Alt + search to activate and deactivate Caps Lock. The search key typically features a magnifying glass and is located on the far left side of your keyboard where Caps Lock is on other laptops. On some Chromebooks, you want to press Alt + Assistant , which is the key that resembles bubbles and is located between the Ctrl and Alt keys on the bottom left side of the keyboard. A notification will pop up and let you know when you’ve activated Caps Lock and again when you deactivate it.

If you use Caps Lock frequently, you can also enable the search key to be a permanent Caps Lock button in Settings. Here’s how:

Click the time in the bottom right corner of your screen. It will pull up different tools for you to use.
Click the gear/settings icon in the top right.
Scroll to Device and click Keyboard.
Use the drop-down menu to the right of Search to select Caps Lock.

5. Switch between work and personal accounts.

Setting up a personal account on your Chromebook to coincide with your work account makes it easy to switch between personal and work email on one device. This post explains how to set up a personal account on a Chromebook. Once you’ve set that up, use Alt + Ctrl + > or Alt + Ctrl + < to quickly switch between accounts.

6. Launch applications located on Chrome OS’s “shelf,” or taskbar.

At the bottom of the screen of your Chromebook, you’ll see a row of icons representing applications. We call this bottom part of the screen the “app shelf.” Keyboard shortcuts let you launch a specific application on the app shelf. Alt + 1 will launch the first app from the left on your shelf, Alt + 2 will open the second app from the left on your shelf, and so on.

For more help on how to work efficiently on Chromebooks, check out our posts on how to set up a new Chromebook, 6 common questions for former Mac users who are new to Chromebook, how to use a Chromebook if you’ve switched from a PC, and (for IT admins) 5 Google IT tips for driving and sustaining Chromebook adoption. Whether you’re new to Chromebooks or have used them for a while, these tips can help you—and your company—complete your work faster.

Source: Google Chrome

6 Chromebook keyboard shortcuts that save time

1. Dock browser windows.

Digging into projects often requires opening more than one browser window—also called a “browser instance”—at a time. This can be an effective way to organize work. You can open one browser instance for dashboards, one for apps, another for Gmail, a third for Google Docs you’re working on, and, perhaps, one for music.

2. Switch between browser instances or browser tabs.

Docking browser instances is one way to work more efficiently when you’re juggling projects. Another strategy is to quickly switch between what you have open. Within each browser instance, it’s not uncommon to have multiple tabs open on your screen. People do this often when they’re searching the web or working in different apps, like Gmail or Drive. You can use keyboard shortcuts to switch between browser instances and between tabs.

3. Recover closed tabs.

If you accidentally close Chrome, there’s no need to worry. Simply hit Ctrl + Shift + T and your most recently closed tab (or browser instance) comes right back. If you closed more than one, just hit that combination of keys again, and Chrome will keep restoring.

4. Use Caps Lock.

One of the first things you might notice when you switch to Chrome OS is that there’s no Caps Lock key. But let’s face it, sometimes you need to shout your enthusiasm (COOKIES IN THE BREAKROOM!). In such instances, Caps Lock is just a keyboard shortcut away.

If you use Caps Lock frequently, you can also enable the search key to be a permanent Caps Lock button in Settings. Here’s how:

Click the time in the bottom right corner of your screen. It will pull up different tools for you to use.
Click the gear/settings icon in the top right.
Scroll to Device and click Keyboard.
Use the drop-down menu to the right of Search to select Caps Lock.

5. Switch between work and personal accounts.

6. Launch applications located on Chrome OS’s “shelf,” or taskbar.

At the bottom of the screen of your Chromebook, you’ll see a row of icons representing applications. We call this bottom part of the screen the “app shelf.” Keyboard shortcuts let you launch a specific application on the app shelf. Alt + 1 will launch the first app from the left on your shelf, Alt + 2 will open the second app from the left on your shelf, and so on.

Source: Google Chrome

Get more done with a little help from Google Chrome

There are a million and one reasons you open your browser every day, and keeping track of tabs shouldn’t distract you from your goals. With tab improvements and more options to customize Chrome, you’ll be equipped to take on the day.

Chrome updates frequently to bring you new features and security improvements, and our latest version will help you get back into your productivity groove. Here’s an overview of new features coming to Chrome this fall.

Keep tabs on your tabs

Ever lost track of tabs on your phone? Us too. Over the next few weeks, you’ll see Android’s new grid layout, which helps you select tabs more easily and preview thumbnails of the tabs you have open. (iOS users will already see this tab grid layout).

There’s also a new way to group tabs on your Android device, which helps you keep track of the tabs that are open. To do this, drag and drop one tab on top of another in the new tab grid layout. After opening one of the grouped tabs, you can easily switch between the tabs in the group using the new tab switcher at the bottom of your screen.

The tab grid layout and tab grouping capabilities make it easier than ever to stay organized in Chrome on your Android device

If you have so many tabs open on your laptop that you can’t read the page titles anymore (guilty!), you can now preview your tabs by hovering over them with your cursor. For now you’ll see the page title, and soon you’ll see a thumbnail of the page too.

Copy of ChromeSocial_HoverTab_V02.gif — Soon hovering over tabs will show the page title, and later this year the hover card will include a page thumbnail.

If you want to save a link from your phone so you can open it later on your laptop (or vice versa), you no longer have to do the “email yourself but forget to read it” thing. Now you can use Chrome to send a tab to another computer, phone, or tablet on which you are signed in and have sync enabled.

Copy of ChromeSocial_Self_Sharing_V03.gif — Share tabs between your devices

Help from Google built in

Chrome’s address bar helps you get to your results faster than ever. Now on both desktop and Android, answers will show up inside the address bar where you type your query—whether you’re looking for results about sporting events or instant answers about the local weather or translations of a foreign word.

Copy of ChromeSocial_RichEntities_V02.gif — Get answers to your important questions directly in the address bar

Chrome automatically prompts translation when you need it, and you can access translation tools in the Chrome menu or from the address bar on desktop.

Copy of ChromeSocial_TranslatePage_V02.gif — Automatically translate the web into over 100 languages with translation tools built into Chrome

Make Chrome yours

Your work environment impacts productivity and your mood. If plants and nature help you relax and unwind, change the background of your new tab page to a floral design. If you draw energy from the color yellow, use Chrome’s new color customization tool to change the color of your entire browser to the shade that brings you bliss. As for me, my browser color matches my hair—bright pink.

Copy of _ChromeSocial_customizeColors_V02.gif — Make Chrome yours by customizing the background, color, and theme

These features help boost your productivity, but these aren’t the only features we’re adding this year. Look for updates later in the fall about more improvements coming to Chrome.

Source: Google Chrome

Building a more private web

Privacy is paramount to us, in everything we do. So today, we are announcing a new initiative to develop a set of open standards to fundamentally enhance privacy on the web. We’re calling this a Privacy Sandbox.

Technology that publishers and advertisers use to make advertising even more relevant to people is now being used far beyond its original design intent - to a point where some data practices don’t match up to user expectations for privacy. Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.

First, large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting. With fingerprinting, developers have found ways to use tiny bits of information that vary between users, such as what device they have or what fonts they have installed to generate a unique identifier which can then be used to match a user across websites. Unlike cookies, users cannot clear their fingerprint, and therefore cannot control how their information is collected. We think this subverts user choice and is wrong.

Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web. Many publishers have been able to continue to invest in freely accessible content because they can be confident that their advertising will fund their costs. If this funding is cut, we are concerned that we will see much less accessible content for everyone. Recent studies have shown that when advertising is made less relevant by removing cookies, funding for publishers falls by 52% on average¹.

So we are doing something different. We want to find a solution that both really protects user privacy and also helps content remain freely accessible on the web. At I/O, we announced a plan to improve the classification of cookies, give clarity and visibility to cookie settings, as well as plans to more aggressively block fingerprinting. We are making progress on this, and today we are providing more details on our plans to restrict fingerprinting. Collectively we believe all these changes will improve transparency, choice, and control.

But, we can go further. Starting with today’s announcements, we will work with the web community to develop new standards that advance privacy, while continuing to support free access to content. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve started sharing our preliminary ideas for a Privacy Sandbox - a secure environment for personalization that also protects user privacy. Some ideas include new approaches to ensure that ads continue to be relevant for users, but user data shared with websites and advertisers would be minimized by anonymously aggregating user information, and keeping much more user information on-device only. Our goal is to create a set of standards that is more consistent with users’ expectations of privacy.

We are following the web standards process and seeking industry feedback on our initial ideas for the Privacy Sandbox. While Chrome can take action quickly in some areas (for instance, restrictions on fingerprinting) developing web standards is a complex process, and we know from experience that ecosystem changes of this scope take time. They require significant thought, debate, and input from many stakeholders, and generally take multiple years.

To move things forward as quickly as possible, we have documented the specific problems we are trying to solve together, and we are sharing a series of explainers with the web community. We have also summarized these ideas today on the Chromium blog.

We look forward to getting feedback on this approach from the web platform community, including other browsers, publishers, and their advertising partners. Thank you in advance for your help and input on this process - we believe that we must solve these problems together to ensure that the incredible benefits of the open, accessible web continue into the next generation of the internet.

_{1 Google Ad Manager data; n=500 global publishers; Analysis based on an A/B experiment where cookies are disabled on a randomly selected fraction of each publisher's traffic; May-August 2019. More information available on the Google ads blog.}

Source: Google Chrome

The Advanced Protection Program expands to Chrome

The Advanced Protection Program is our strongest level of protection for the personal Google Accounts of anyone at risk of targeted attacks — like journalists, activists, politicians and business leaders. It offers an evolving list of security offerings to protect our users holistically, across different ways an attacker can try to gain access to their accounts and data.

Starting today, Advanced Protection Program users who have turned on sync in Chrome will automatically start receiving stronger protections against risky downloads across the web, like files containing malware. Advanced Protection users already benefit from malware protections beyond Gmail's standard, industry-leading safeguards. As a result, attackers are shifting their strategies to threaten Advanced Protection users outside of email with linked malware and “drive-by downloads” where users unknowingly download harmful software onto their devices.

To protect our users proactively, attempts to download certain risky files will now show additional warnings, or in some cases even be blocked. While Chrome protects all users against malware, Advanced Protection users will get an even stronger level of protection.

Warnings like these will prevent Advanced Protection users from downloading unsafe files

This additional protection is part of a growing list of security offerings for those enrolled in the Advanced Protection Program. Just last week, we announced that Enterprise admins could extend the program’s protections to G Suite, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Cloud Identity customers. If you or your organization is interested in enrolling in the Advanced Protection Program, learn more at g.co/advancedprotection.

Source: Google Chrome

Protecting private browsing in Chrome

Chrome’s Incognito Mode is based on the principle that you should have the choice to browse the web privately. At the end of July, Chrome will remedy a loophole that has allowed sites to detect people who are browsing in Incognito Mode. This will affect some publishers who have used the loophole to deter metered paywall circumvention, so we’d like to explain the background and context of the change.

Private browsing principles

People choose to browse the web privately for many reasons. Some wish to protect their privacy on shared or borrowed devices, or to exclude certain activities from their browsing histories. In situations such as political oppression or domestic abuse, people may have important safety reasons for concealing their web activity and their use of private browsing features.

We want you to be able to access the web privately, with the assurance that your choice to do so is private as well. These principles are consistent with emerging web standards for private browsing modes.

Closing the FileSystem API loophole

Today, some sites use an unintended loophole to detect when people are browsing in Incognito Mode. Chrome’s FileSystem API is disabled in Incognito Mode to avoid leaving traces of activity on someone’s device. Sites can check for the availability of the FileSystem API and, if they receive an error message, determine that a private session is occurring and give the user a different experience.

With the release of Chrome 76 scheduled for July 30, the behavior of the FileSystem API will be modified to remedy this method of Incognito Mode detection. Chrome will likewise work to remedy any other current or future means of Incognito Mode detection.

Publisher impact and strategies

The change will affect sites that use the FileSystem API to intercept Incognito Mode sessions and require people to log in or switch to normal browsing mode, on the assumption that these individuals are attempting to circumvent metered paywalls.

Unlike hard paywalls or registration walls, which require people to log in to view any content, meters offer a number of free articles before you must log in. This model is inherently porous, as it relies on a site’s ability to track the number of free articles someone has viewed, typically using cookies. Private browsing modes are one of several tactics people use to manage their cookies and thereby "reset" the meter count.

Sites that wish to deter meter circumvention have options such as reducing the number of free articles someone can view before logging in, requiring free registration to view any content, or hardening their paywalls. Other sites offer more generous meters as a way to develop affinity among potential subscribers, recognizing some people will always look for workarounds. We suggest publishers monitor the effect of the FileSystem API change before taking reactive measures since any impact on user behavior may be different than expected and any change in meter strategy will impact all users, not just those using Incognito Mode.

Our News teams support sites with meter strategies and recognize the goal of reducing meter circumvention, however any approach based on private browsing detection undermines the principles of Incognito Mode. We remain open to exploring solutions that are consistent with user trust and private browsing principles.

Source: Google Chrome

Protecting private browsing in Chrome

UPDATE (1/7/2020): With the Chrome 80 release scheduled for early February 2020, Chrome plans to address two additional loopholes which could be used to detect Incognito Mode sessions. With the first fix (Chromium issue #990592), Chrome will handle permanent file system requests similarly to temporary requests. With the second fix (Chromium issue #1017120), Chrome will no longer provide a fixed data storage limit in Incognito Mode and will instead dynamically allocate the quota based on available memory.