Google Chrome’s final 2020 update brings significant performance improvements

The year may be coming to a close but that hasn’t stopped Google from pushing out one more release of Chrome updates.

Google began releasing their Chrome 87 updates on Nov 17 and these were said to contribute to major performance improvements.

“This month’s update represents the largest gain in Chrome performance in years, thanks to many under-the-hood improvements,” said director of product Matt Waddell, in a blog post.

Here are the five features from the new update to look out for:

Have you ever opened way too many tabs and find yourself struggling to find the one you need?

Users can now do a tab search, which is essentially a search function, to sift through all your open tabs and find the one you are looking for. 

This feature will first debut on Chromebooks before expanding to other desktop platforms.

We’ve all had multiple tabs open at the same time, but did you know this has been draining out your battery even quicker?

To tackle this, Chrome will now prioritise your active tabs over other tabs that could be running in the background. Not to worry, this update does not sacrifice background features like music playing and notifications.

This reduces the CPU usage by up to five times, and can extend your battery life by up to 1.25 hours.

With the new update, the Chrome browser should launch 25 per cent faster and load pages up to 7 per cent faster. 

Compared to the prior system, Chrome now uses less power and RAM, so your device should feel less laggy. 

The new feature called Chrome Actions will allow users to type instructions directly into the address bar. As an example, you can now input commands like “delete my history” which will trigger a button for said command. 

Other commands include opening incognito windows and managing payment methods when online shopping.

This first set of actions that Chrome released will focus on privacy and security, and will be made available on desktops. More actions will be made available in future updates.

Cards is a feature that will bring recently visited pages and related content to your tabs.

This will help save time as you no longer have to restart your online activities with a Google Search and scrollinging through the results to find the pages you previously visited.

For now, the cards will focus on categories like cooking and shopping, but Google is also planning to add entertainment-focused cards in 2021.

Chrome 87 will continue rolling out their releases over the next few weeks. So stay tuned to their page to keep yourself updated!

In the meantime, you can keep your Chrome exciting with extensions that you wouldn’t regret downloading.