Google Chrome’s five interesting features every user should know

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Google Chrome is one of the most popular browsers out there. Over the last few years, we have seen Google Chrome evolve with a range of useful features. Dark mode, improved tab management system and add recover tab options are some of the recent additions. If you’re a Google Chrome user, here are some of the interesting features that you should know.

Gesture navigation:Chrome has introduced gestures that allow users to navigate from one web page to another effortlessly. The feature allows users to swipe inward from the left-hand side of the display to go back and inward from the right to go forward. To activate it, one has to type chrome://flags/#overscroll-history-navigation into your URL bar and make sure the setting is switched on. Users have to restart Chrome for setting to kick in.

Google Omnibox: Users may not know this, but the address bar in Chrome, where we usually put in the URLs is the Omnibox, a direct interface to the Google search engine. While users may have noticed that simply typing things in the Omnibox takes one straight to Google results, but the Omnibox can do mathematical calculations, give weather updates etc without even going to the actual search page to find the answer.

Recovering lost tabs: What do you do when you accidentally close all your tabs at once? Chrome has introduced a new feature that allows users to reopen any page they have discarded. Users have to press Control+Shift+T on Windows. It can also be accessed by right-clicking the ‘+’ sign and pressing the ‘reopen closed tab’ button.

Dark Mode: The Dark Mode on Google Chrome debuted earlier in 2019 and it is not only less strenuous on the eyes but also increases battery life for OLED users. One has to go to Windows and head to Settings > Appearance and adjust the theme to “Material Incognito Dark Theme”. The dark mode is available on Mac OS 10.14 and up as well as Windows 10 and up.

Muting sites: Popup adverts and unwanted noise can make browsing the internet distracting. Chrome has a little speaker icon in the tab title for sites that are playing audio. One can quickly check which are the sites creating noise among multiple open tabs and simply right-click the tab and click mute site.