Chrome flags are a set of experimental features and settings that are buried in Chrome for developers and tinkerers. It will let you improve your browsing performance and also lets you use new in-development features.
Before we come to know how you can enable Chrome flags, it’s essential to know that some of the features might be a little buggy and the changes might crash your Chrome settings and data. It is advisable to use it when you want at a minimal level.
How to enable it?
- Please find Chrome flags by just typing “chrome://flags” or “about://flags” in the Omnibox (address/search bar).
- Once ‘Chrome flags’ is open, you’ll see a long list of features that you can enable or disable. You can easily search for specific features by typing in the search box.
- All the advanced features have a short description below 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”.
- After you select the “Enable” or “Disable” option, you will be presented with a “Relaunch Now” button that will save your changes and restart Chrome with the changes in place.
- If you feel that your Chrome experience has become unstable but can’t find the flag that might have caused it, you can use the “reset all to default” button to restore all the Chrome flags settings.
Some of the Features:
- 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. - Faster Download Speeds
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 Smooth ScrollingAs the name suggests, this Chrome flag helps improve the scrolling experience on your mobile and desktop. It reduces the janks and jitters that you may witness while scrolling and it works with Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS as well.
- Secure DNS Lookups
Another awesome Chrome Flag that you must enable is Secure DNS Lookups. Many users, including me, have been using the HTTPS Everywhere extension to always force HTTPS connection while using the internet. And now, Google has brought a flag that does the same thing. So just enable the flag and Chrome will try to use a secure HTTPS connection for any website that you are visiting. By the way, Mozilla has already made DNS over HTTPS a default feature on Firefox. - Share Webpages Using QR Codes
This is one of the latest Google Chrome Flags and its job is to make sharing links easier. Suppose you are browsing the web on your desktop and you want to quickly open that link on your mobile device. Well, there’s no easy way to share links to your mobile device unless you are logged in to the desktop Chrome and your mobile device with the same Google ID. Well, if you enable this flag you will be able to share links in seconds. To make this work, open the Google Flags page and search for “QR”. Now enable the “#sharing-qr-code-generator” flag. Once you do that, you will see a ‘QR code’ icon in the address bar, next to the bookmark (star) icon. Click on it and Chrome will show you a QR code corresponding to the webpage that’s on your current tab. Just scan it with your phone to open the link on your smartphone. - 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. - Pull to Refresh Gesture
This is one of my favorite Chrome flags on this list. You can enable this gesture on your laptop and swipe down on the trackpad to refresh the webpage. - 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.