Chrome Dev for Android Update

Hi everyone! We've just released Chrome Dev 128 (128.0.6547.3) for Android. It's now available on Google Play.

You can see a partial list of the changes in the Git log. For details on new features, check out the Chromium blog, and for details on web platform updates, check here.

If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug.

Harry Souders
Google Chrome

Google Meet adds 52 new languages to translated captions and 11 more languages for closed captions

What’s changing

For all Google Workspace customers and users with personal accounts, we’ve expanded support for closed captioning to include the following languages in beta*, bringing the total language count to 87: 
  • Azerbaijani 
  • Czech 
  • Greek 
  • Icelandic 
  • Kazakh 
  • Lao 
  • Lithuanian  
  • Malay 
  • Serbian 
  • Swahili 
  • Ukrainian 
*Newly supported languages are denoted with a “beta” tag as we continue to optimize performance.

For Gemini for Google Workspace customers, we are adding 52 languages to translated captions with full language support, which means these languages can be translated to and from any other fully supported language. We are also launching full language support to 6 previously launched languages. Translated captions now fully support 69 languages which allows for over 4,600 language pairs: 

-Afrikaans

-Albanian 

-Amharic 

-Arabic

-Armenian

-Azerbaijani

-Basque

-Bengali

-Bulgarian

-Burmese

-Catalan

-Chinese (Simplified)*

-Chinese (Mandarin)*

-Czech

-Dutch**

-English*

-Estonian

-Filipino

-Finnish

-French*

-Galician 

-Georgian

-German*

-Greek

-Gujarati

-Hebrew

-Hindi*

-Hungarian

-Icelandic

-Indonesian**

-Italian*

-Japanese**

-Javanese

-Kannada

-Kazakh

-Khmer

-Korean

-Lao

-Latvian

-Lithuanian

-Macedonian

-Malay

-Malayalam

-Marathi

-Mongolian

-Nepali

-Norwegian

-Persian (Farsi)

-Polish

-Portuguese*

-Romanian

-Russian*

-Serbian

-Sinhala

-Slovak

-Slovenian

-Spanish*

-Sundanese 

-Swahili

-Swedish**

-Tamil

-Telugu

-Thai*

-Turkish**

-Ukrainian

-Urdu

-Uzbek

-Vietnamese**

- Zulu



* Full language support previously launched
** Previously only English into these languages was supported. For more information, see our previous announcement on the Workspace Updates blog.


Additional details 

Update on the availability of translated captions for some Google Workspace customers 
As we previously announced, translated captions in Google Meet will be exclusively available to Gemini for Google Workspace customers. This will go into effect starting January 22, 2025, when existing and new customers will no longer have access to translated captions through their Google Workspace subscription. At this time, translated captions will only be available in the following Gemini add-ons: Gemini Enterprise, AI Meetings and Messaging, and Gemini Education premium. 

We will continue to invest in and improve translated captions with the additional languages and automatic language detection. In addition to translated captions, the Gemini for Workspace add-ons offer other generative AI features such as enhanced audio and image quality on meetings, take notes for me (in alpha), and more — use this link to learn more


Getting started 

  • End users: These features are available by default. Visit the Help Center to learn more about captions and translated captions in Google Meet. 
  • Meeting participants: You can use live translated captions if the meeting is organized by a user with an eligible Google Workspace edition. Closed captions are available for all users. 

Rollout pace 

Live captions language expansion: 
  • This feature is available now. 
Translated captions expansion: 

Availability 

  • Captions: Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts 
  • Translated Captions: Available for Google Workspace customers with the Gemini Enterprise, Gemini Education Premium, and AI Meetings & Messaging add-ons 

Resources 

Chrome Beta for Desktop Update

The Beta channel has been updated to 127.0.6533.17 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

A partial list of changes is available in the Git log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.

Daniel Yip
Google Chrome

Create interactive YouTube assignments in Google Classroom more quickly and efficiently, with the help of AI

What’s changing

Last year, we introduced interactive questions for YouTube videos in Google Classroom. Since then, educators have been able to turn a passive watching experience into an engaging one, while improving students’ understanding of a subject. 

The current process to create interactive questions requires an educator to manually choose a timestamp, come up with questions, and insert correct answers and distractors. To improve upon this experience and save educators time, we’re introducing AI-suggested questions that educators can easily attach to the video based on its content. 

Before assigning the interactive video activity, Educators will be able to edit the suggested questions ahead of attaching the YouTube video to the assignment. 


Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users 


Why you’d use it 

This update helps educators add interactive questions to YouTube videos more quickly and efficiently. 


Additional details 

Even when using the suggestions feature, educators can still edit, remove or create their own interactive questions. Note that suggested questions are only available for certain videos in English. 


Getting started 

Rollout pace 

  • This feature is available now. 

Availability 

Available for Google Workspace: 
  • Education Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade 

Resources 

Staying Safe with Chrome Extensions

Chrome extensions can boost your browsing, empowering you to do anything from customizing the look of sites to providing personalized advice when you’re planning a vacation. But as with any software, extensions can also introduce risk.

That’s why we have a team whose only job is to focus on keeping you safe as you install and take advantage of Chrome extensions. Our team:

  • Provides you with a personalized summary of the extensions you’ve installed
  • Reviews extensions before they’re published on the Chrome Web Store
  • Continuously monitors extensions after they’re published

A summary of your extensions

The top of the extensions page (chrome://extensions) warns you of any extensions you have installed that might pose a security risk. (If you don’t see a warning panel, you probably don’t have any extensions you need to worry about.) The panel includes:

  • Extensions suspected of including malware
  • Extensions that violate Chrome Web Store policies
  • Extensions that have been unpublished by a developer, which might indicate that an extension is no longer supported
  • Extensions that aren’t from the Chrome Web Store
  • Extensions that haven’t published what they do with data they collect and other privacy practices

You’ll get notified when Chrome’s Safety Check has recommendations for you or you can check on your own by running Safety Check. Just type “run safety check” in Chrome’s address bar and select the corresponding shortcut: “Go to Chrome safety check.”

User flow of removing extensions highlighted by Safety Check.

Besides the Safety Check, you can visit the extensions page directly in a number of ways:

  • Navigate to chrome://extensions
  • Click the puzzle icon and choose “Manage extensions”
  • Click the More choices menu and choose menu > Extensions > Manage Extensions

Reviewing extensions before they’re published

Before an extension is even accessible to install from the Chrome Web Store, we have two levels of verification to ensure an extension is safe:

  1. An automated review: Each extension gets examined by our machine-learning systems to spot possible violations or suspicious behavior.
  2. A human review: Next, a team member examines the images, descriptions, and public policies of each extension. Depending on the results of both the automated and manual review, we may perform an even deeper and more thorough review of the code.

This review process weeds out the overwhelming majority of bad extensions before they even get published. In 2024, less than 1% of all installs from the Chrome Web Store were found to include malware. We're proud of this record and yet some bad extensions still get through, which is why we also monitor published extensions.

Monitoring published extensions

The same Chrome team that reviews extensions before they get published also reviews extensions that are already on the Chrome Web Store. And just like the pre-check, this monitoring includes both human and machine reviews. We also work closely with trusted security researchers outside of Google, and even pay researchers who report possible threats to Chrome users through our Developer Data Protection Rewards Program.

What about extensions that get updated over time, or are programmed to execute malicious code at a later date? Our systems monitor for that as well, by periodically reviewing what extensions are actually doing and comparing that to the stated objectives defined by each extension in the Chrome Web Store.

If the team finds that an extension poses a severe risk to Chrome users, it’s immediately remove from the Chrome Web Store and the extension gets disabled on all browsers that have it installed.

The extensions page highlights when you have a potentially unsafe extension downloaded

Others steps you can take to stay safe



Review new extensions before installing them

The Chrome Web Store provides useful information about each extension and its developer. The following information should help you decide whether it’s safe to install an extension:

  • Verified and featured badges are awarded by the Chrome team to extensions that follow our technical best practices and meet a high standard of user experience and design
  • Ratings and reviews from our users
  • Information about the developer
  • Privacy practices, including information about how an extension handles your data

Be careful of sites that try to quickly persuade you to install extensions, especially if the site has little in common with the extension.

Review extensions you’ve already installed

Even though Safety Check and your Extensions page (chrome://extensions) warn you of extensions that might pose a risk, it’s still a good idea to review your extensions from time to time.

  1. Uninstall extensions that you no longer use.
  2. Review the description of an extension in the Chrome Web Store, considering the extension’s ratings, reviews, and privacy practices — reviews can change over time.
  3. Compare an extension’s stated goals with 1) the permissions requested by an extension and 2) the privacy practices published by the extension. If requested permissions don’t align with stated goals, consider uninstalling the extension.
  4. Limit the sites an extension has permission to work on.

Enable Enhanced Protection

The Enhanced protection mode of Safe Browsing is Chrome’s highest level of protection that we offer. Not only does this mode provide you with the best protections against phishing and malware, but it also provides additional features targeted to keep you safe against potentially harmful extensions. Threats are constantly evolving and Safe Browsing’s Enhanced protection mode is the best way to ensure that you have the most advanced security features in Chrome. This can be enabled from the Safe Browsing settings page in Chrome (chrome://settings/security) and selecting “Enhanced”.

Staying Safe with Chrome Extensions

Chrome extensions can boost your browsing, empowering you to do anything from customizing the look of sites to providing personalized advice when you’re planning a vacation. But as with any software, extensions can also introduce risk.

That’s why we have a team whose only job is to focus on keeping you safe as you install and take advantage of Chrome extensions. Our team:

  • Provides you with a personalized summary of the extensions you’ve installed
  • Reviews extensions before they’re published on the Chrome Web Store
  • Continuously monitors extensions after they’re published

A summary of your extensions

The top of the extensions page (chrome://extensions) warns you of any extensions you have installed that might pose a security risk. (If you don’t see a warning panel, you probably don’t have any extensions you need to worry about.) The panel includes:

  • Extensions suspected of including malware
  • Extensions that violate Chrome Web Store policies
  • Extensions that have been unpublished by a developer, which might indicate that an extension is no longer supported
  • Extensions that aren’t from the Chrome Web Store
  • Extensions that haven’t published what they do with data they collect and other privacy practices

You’ll get notified when Chrome’s Safety Check has recommendations for you or you can check on your own by running Safety Check. Just type “run safety check” in Chrome’s address bar and select the corresponding shortcut: “Go to Chrome safety check.”

User flow of removing extensions highlighted by Safety Check.

Besides the Safety Check, you can visit the extensions page directly in a number of ways:

  • Navigate to chrome://extensions
  • Click the puzzle icon and choose “Manage extensions”
  • Click the More choices menu and choose menu > Extensions > Manage Extensions

Reviewing extensions before they’re published

Before an extension is even accessible to install from the Chrome Web Store, we have two levels of verification to ensure an extension is safe:

  1. An automated review: Each extension gets examined by our machine-learning systems to spot possible violations or suspicious behavior.
  2. A human review: Next, a team member examines the images, descriptions, and public policies of each extension. Depending on the results of both the automated and manual review, we may perform an even deeper and more thorough review of the code.

This review process weeds out the overwhelming majority of bad extensions before they even get published. In 2024, less than 1% of all installs from the Chrome Web Store were found to include malware. We're proud of this record and yet some bad extensions still get through, which is why we also monitor published extensions.

Monitoring published extensions

The same Chrome team that reviews extensions before they get published also reviews extensions that are already on the Chrome Web Store. And just like the pre-check, this monitoring includes both human and machine reviews. We also work closely with trusted security researchers outside of Google, and even pay researchers who report possible threats to Chrome users through our Developer Data Protection Rewards Program.

What about extensions that get updated over time, or are programmed to execute malicious code at a later date? Our systems monitor for that as well, by periodically reviewing what extensions are actually doing and comparing that to the stated objectives defined by each extension in the Chrome Web Store.

If the team finds that an extension poses a severe risk to Chrome users, it’s immediately remove from the Chrome Web Store and the extension gets disabled on all browsers that have it installed.

The extensions page highlights when you have a potentially unsafe extension downloaded

Others steps you can take to stay safe



Review new extensions before installing them

The Chrome Web Store provides useful information about each extension and its developer. The following information should help you decide whether it’s safe to install an extension:

  • Verified and featured badges are awarded by the Chrome team to extensions that follow our technical best practices and meet a high standard of user experience and design
  • Ratings and reviews from our users
  • Information about the developer
  • Privacy practices, including information about how an extension handles your data

Be careful of sites that try to quickly persuade you to install extensions, especially if the site has little in common with the extension.

Review extensions you’ve already installed

Even though Safety Check and your Extensions page (chrome://extensions) warn you of extensions that might pose a risk, it’s still a good idea to review your extensions from time to time.

  1. Uninstall extensions that you no longer use.
  2. Review the description of an extension in the Chrome Web Store, considering the extension’s ratings, reviews, and privacy practices — reviews can change over time.
  3. Compare an extension’s stated goals with 1) the permissions requested by an extension and 2) the privacy practices published by the extension. If requested permissions don’t align with stated goals, consider uninstalling the extension.
  4. Limit the sites an extension has permission to work on.

Enable Enhanced Protection

The Enhanced protection mode of Safe Browsing is Chrome’s highest level of protection that we offer. Not only does this mode provide you with the best protections against phishing and malware, but it also provides additional features targeted to keep you safe against potentially harmful extensions. Threats are constantly evolving and Safe Browsing’s Enhanced protection mode is the best way to ensure that you have the most advanced security features in Chrome. This can be enabled from the Safe Browsing settings page in Chrome (chrome://settings/security) and selecting “Enhanced”.