Google Chrome: 5 secret features to upgrade your browsing experience

Google Chrome is one of the world’s most used browsers, and it’s not just because it ships by default on most Android smartphones. Chrome is also known for its wide range of features that enable snappy surfing and much more. 

However, not all of these features are neatly tucked into Chrome’s settings menu. Instead, some of the best features are hidden in the app’s experimental features menu, and need to be enabled first before you can use them. Here are Chrome’s best features and how to enable them. Note that while these features are for Android phones, some of them may also work with Apple iPhones, macOS or Windows. Here’s a list of the top Google Chrome hidden features.

Protect incognito tabs with biometrics

Chrome’s Incognito Mode allows you to browse the web without your affecting your history. It’s also a great feature for more personal browsing sessions. However, to keep these private, you must close incognito tabs before handing the phone over to other users, like kids.  

But what if you don’t want to always close your incognito tabs? What if you landed on an interesting article or page that you don’t want to hunt for again? Good news, you can simply lock your incognito session with fingerprint authentication.  

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To do that, open Chrome and type in “chrome://flags/#incognito-reauthentication-for-android” (without the quotes) and you should reach a page with many new settings. On the top, find the section titled ‘Enable device reauthentication for Incognito’ and change the drop-down to Enabled.  

Close Chrome on your Android device and launch it again. Open the three-dot menu on the top-right and navigate to Settings> Privacy and Security, and switch on the toggle next to the new option titled ‘Lock incognito tabs when you leave Chrome’. You can now leave incognito tabs by pressing the home button, and upon return, Chrome will ask you to reauthenticate yourself using a fingerprint.  

Take screenshots in incognito mode

Chrome doesn’t let you take screenshots in incognito tabs by default. If you try to, you will simply be filling your storage with black, blank screenshots. However, another experimental Chrome feature lets you do just this.  

To enable it, open another tab in Chrome and put in the following code in the address bar – “chrome://flags/#incognito-screenshot” (again, without the quotes). You should find another drop down under the ‘Incognito Screenshot’ section, switch it to enabled, relaunch Chrome, and you’re now ready to take screenshots in incognito mode. 

Download files faster with Parallel Downloads

Chrome’s arsenal of experimental features also includes a Parallel Downloads feature that will increase the download speed. This is particularly helpful for larger files, wherein they are broken down into smaller chunks, downloading them at the same time, and then stitching together the larger file. 

To enable this feature, open a new Chrome tab and type in the following code in the address bar without the quotes “chrome://flags/#enable-parallel-downloading”. Switch the toggle to enabled, relaunch Chrome and you’re good to go.  

Enable Live Captions for media

Yes, newer Android versions have a Live Captions feature baked into them, allowing users to get system-wide captions for videos. However, Chrome includes a native implementation of this feature that can be helpful if you’re on an older Android version, or on an iOS/iPadOS device.  

To enable the feature, type the following code minus the quotes in a new Chrome tab’s address bar – “chrome://flags/#enable-accessibility-live-caption”. Similar to previous steps, turn the toggle to Enabled, relaunch Chrome, and you’re ready to play YouTube or other videos with live captions right in your browser.  

Enable smoother scrolling

If you do a lot of web browsing, occasional jerky scrolling in web pages is likely a pet peeve you require no introduction to. Chrome can, however, animate your scrolls and reduce or completely get rid of the annoying jerky scrolling for you, via yet another experimental feature. 

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To enable this feature, open a new tab and paste the following code in the address bar without the quotes – “chrome://flags/#smooth-scrolling”. Switch the toggle to Enabled, relaunch Chrome, and you should now experience a smoother scrolling experience. 

Those were five of Chrome’s experimental features that we think you may find useful. Chrome also has a number of other experimental features that you can find under the “chrome://flags/” section.

Feel free to try them out, but remember that these are experimental features, and some of them could break your browsing experience. Happy browsing!