Chrome is getting a price tracking feature on Android devices

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Google has unveiled a new feature for its Android app that will keep track of prices for you. The feature is part of Chrome version 90 and is available to some users now.

This feature, which was originally discovered by SmartDroid, is used to track the prices of items listed within the Chrome browser. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this is something that can be completely done in the background.

Once the feature is activated, it will look at an item that is in a tab open in the Chrome browser and alert the user of any price change of that item. So it looks like you will have to have a Chrome tab dedicated to an item to track the prices for now.

The function is said to be a part of Chrome version 90, which has been rolled out as of now, but the feature still isn’t unlocked for everyone. I currently don’t have the feature on my Samsung Galaxy S20.

The feature is currently locked behind a setting in the browser and can be unlocked by going to “chrome://flags/#enable-tab-grid-layout” in the browser. From there, choose “Enabled Price notifications” in the first drop down and the feature should be activated. However, the feature is still locked for some users after doing this.

After the feature is enabled, you can turn it on by selecting the 3-dot settings menu in the top right of the app. From there, select “Track prices” and Chrome will alert you of any price change of items currently in open tabs.

This is a cool feature to add to Chrome, which doesn’t allow for any price tracking plugins on the mobile app, but it seems pretty simple for now. Requiring a tab dedicated to an item you’d like to price track is pretty inconvenient, and may stop people from utilizing the feature.

Hopefully, Google will update this in the future to allow for some kind of tracking that happens fully in the background.

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