Software

If you store all your passwords on Chrome and use an iPhone, signing into your various accounts is about to get easier. The latest release of the browser for iOS (version M104) will bring the ability for you to set Chrome as your Autofill provider. It’ll also add new “enhanced safe browsing” and Chrome Actions to the app on iPhones and iPads. 

Many of this features are already available in the Android edition of Chrome, like the Password Manager, which uses data you’ve elected to store in the browser to sign into apps on your phone. Enhanced Safe Browsing, when activated on your iPhone or iPad, will check if websites you’re visiting are dangerous. Also, “Chrome warns you if your username and password have been compromised in a third-party data breach” when you enter your credentials into a website. It’ll then urge you to change them everywhere. 

Something that’s not yet available on Android is the first page when you re-open Chrome after awhile. According to Google’s blog post, “We’re making it easier for you to discover new content or start a fresh search in Chrome for iOS when you’ve been away for awhile.” This is supposed to make “it easier to browse content, start a new Search or easily get back to your most frequently visited sites” while still letting you locate your recent tabs. Google added that this “will also come to Android soon.”

Those who rely on Chrome’s built-in translation tools might find the updated language identification model helpful. Google says this new on-device version will help you “accurately figure out the language of the page you’re visiting, and whether it needs to be translated to match your preferences.”

Meanwhile, Chrome Actions will make doing things like clearing your browsing data or opening an incognito tab easier on iOS. You won’t have to go into the three-dot menu to hunt for those options anymore — you can just type a search term for the setting into the URL bar. “Delete history,” for example, will bring you to the page to clear your browsing data. And if you were looking for info on that setting online, you’ll still see the suggested search results below the suggested Action. 

Finally, Google also tweaked the three-dot menu “to be scannable and to highlight the most important destinations, such as your history, passwords and settings. The company said “your most commonly used destinations will be available at the top of the menu” and actions like creating Bookmarks or adding stuff to Reading List will be located higher up in the vertical menu.