The latest release of Chrome brings dark mode to macOS users
While the eye-saving UI change might be the best update in the new Chrome, there’s also a bunch of new tweaks under the hood.
The latest stable release of Google’s Chrome browser is coming today for Mac, Windows, and Linux users. Along with the usual longish list of security patches, Chrome 73 comes with some pretty cool features that should make your life a bit better. Some quality-of-life changes for sync and account sign-in go live, plus developer support for hardware media keys and automatic Picture-in-Picture for videos.
Users of Chrome on macOS get the best UI change ever, with Chrome adding a Dark Mode. It respects systemwide changes, so if you put your Mac into Dark Mode from the Settings menu, Chrome will automagically change to match.
Designwise, it looks almost the same as Incognito Mode, just without that icon. Once the Windows version of Chrome gets Dark Mode, it will also respect the systemwide changes made in the Personalization menu. There’s no timeline for when it’ll arrive on Windows though, so we’ll update this post once we find out.
While the eye-saving UI change might be the best update in the new Chrome, there’s also a bunch of new tweaks under the hood. The Settings page is more streamlined, with a new Sync and Google services section which pulls all of the settings related to data collected by Google into one place.
If you’re logged in with a Google Account, Chrome Sync now has some new tricks
These features included Enhanced spell check and Safe browsing extended reporting. There’s also an opt-in for Make searches and browsing better, which sends anonymized URLs to Google so they can improve on services. If you’ve updated to Chrome 73 and don’t see these options, don’t worry – they’re being rolled out in stages so they’ll arrive over the next few days/weeks.
A new tab grouping feature for organizing multiple tabs is also rolling out, which might remove the reliance on third-party extensions to get our tabs under control.
Other minor improvements include support for hardware media keys for controlling content on supported devices, automatic picture-in-picture for installed Progressive Web Apps, so the video will automatically float above the browser even if you switch tabs, something that users of video conferencing apps will appreciate, and a Skip Ad button for sites like YouTube.
Chrome 73 is available on desktops right now, with Android and ChromeOS coming in the following weeks.
What do you think? Excited for Chrome 73? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
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