Google Chrome Gets One of Microsoft Edge's Best Features

Google Chrome has been getting plenty of updates and quality-of-life changes. And now it seems Google is taking a page from Microsoft Edge’s book with a new upcoming feature.

As revealed by Reddit user Leopeva64-2 and reported on by MSPowerUser, Google Chrome is set to get a new feature that lets users close a tab by double-clicking on it, which is an especially useful feature when there are too many tabs open. The reason is that when too many tabs are open, the ‘X’ button is no longer visible, meaning that you normally would have to click on the tab directly. But with the double-tap method, it makes closing excessive tabs much easier and faster.

Just like in Edge, this option will most likely have an option to toggle on and off in the browser settings. If this feature ends up being fully developed, Chrome Canary — a beta version of Chrome mainly targeted at developers, passionate tech users, and browser enthusiasts — would most likely be testing it first, followed by Chrome Stable users.

Google Chrome has been stepping it up

The quick close tab feature is one of several that Google has been introducing to its Chrome browser. Lately, the tech giant has been focused on making sweeping changes that target Apple iOS. For instance, it seems that Google’s Chromium engineers are testing the Blink browser engine on iOS devices instead of Apple’s WebKit engine, which is most likely preparing for a point in the future that would allow it to power Chrome with the Blink engine.

And in an upcoming update for Chrome, Google promises to improve battery usage by matching Safari’s level of energy efficiency for simple web browsing tasks. And combined with the newly introduced Energy Saver mode, it should allow for Chrome to exceed Apple’s own battery life predictions.

Finally, Google is working on a new feature that would allow those who use the best Google Chrome extensions to enable and disable extensions on a per-site basis. This is an especially useful feature since it can help users prevent security and privacy issues like e-commerce extensions tracking browsing activity or certain extensions affecting some sites’ performance.

With all these improvements coming to Chrome, it’s truly being shaped into the best web browser out there, which would ensure that the stranglehold it has on the browser market isn’t challenged.

March 02, 2023