Chrome’s final release for 2020 brings massive performance enhancements, interesting new features

Google’s Chrome has often been criticised for being resource-intensive. Of late, Google has made several enhancements to the browser to address this concern. Now, Google in its final Chrome release for 2020 is bringing many under-the-hood improvements, including performance enhancement.

Touted as the largest gain in Chrome performance in years, the update now prioritises active tabs on the browser against everything open. Google says this will reduce CPU usage by up to 5X and extends battery life by up to 1.25 hours. The improvements also help Chrome to start up to 25% faster than before. Pages now load up to 7% faster. Google highlights that the updated Chrome does all this without hogging power and RAM. The mobile version of Chrome (on Android) is now said to load pages almost instantly when users navigate back and forward.

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Apart from performance enhancements, Google is adding new features to Chrome. One of the top new features is the ability to tab search. Added in the toolbox, users can now see a list of your open tabs regardless of the window they are open. The feature will be initially available on Chromebooks. Chrome’s other desktop clients will also get it shortly.

Users can now do a lot more things from the omnibox apart from basic search and browsing. The updated version allows you to search for Chrome’s functionalities such as “delete history” and “edit passwords” directly from the omnibox. These functionalities will be first available to the desktop version of Chrome.

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Google has also introduced Cards in Chrome to help users start browsing from where they had left off.

“They include recently-visited and related content, and they'll start showing up for some users on the new tab page, underneath the shortcuts. We’re starting with a few experiments in areas like cooking and shopping, and we plan to add entertainment early next year. This is a definitely a new type of experience in Chrome, so we welcome your feedback,” Google said in a blog post.