Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, ChromeOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 106 is beta as of September 1, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

Origin Trials

This version of Chrome supports the origin trials described below. Origin trials allow you to try new features and give feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community. To register for any of the origin trials currently supported in Chrome, including the ones described below, visit the Chrome Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials in Chrome, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers. Microsoft Edge runs its own origin trials separate from Chrome. To learn more, see the Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Developer Console.

Anonymous iframes

Anonymous iframes give developers a way to load documents in third-party iframes using new and ephemeral contexts. Anonymous iframes are a generalization of COEP, i.e. Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy: credentialless to support third-party iframes that may not deploy COEP. As with COEP: credentialless, it replaces the opt-in of cross-origin subresources with avoiding loading of non-public resources. This removes the constraint that third party iframes must support COEP in order to be embedded in a COEP page and unblocks developers looking to adopt cross-origin-isolation.

The origin trial is expected to last through Chrome 108. To sign up for the origin trial, visit its sign up page.

Pop-Up API

The Pop-Up API lets developers build transient user interface elements to display on top of other web app interface elements. This API is useful for creating interactive elements such as action menus, form element suggestions, content pickers, and teaching user interfaces.

This API uses a new popup content attribute to enable any element to be displayed in the top layer. This attribute's effect on the pop-up is similar to that of the <dialog> element, but has several important differences, including light-dismiss behavior, pop-up interaction management, animation, event support, and non-modal mode.

The origin trial is expected to last through Chrome 110. To sign up for the origin trial, visit its sign up page.

Other Features in this Release

Client Hints persistency in Android WebView

Client Hints are now persisted on Android WebView, creating parity with the rest of the web platform. Previously, WebView did not persist the list of Client Hints a page requests, so the initial load of a website would never include Client Hints. Only subresources on a given page would receive them. This undermined the use of the Client Hints system, which is to empower websites to adapt content to the user agent. For more information on Client Hints, see HTTP Client hints.

CSS

grid-template properties interpolation

In CSS Grid, the 'grid-template-columns' and 'grid-template-rows' properties allow developers to define line names and track sizing of grid columns and rows respectively. Supporting interpolation for these properties allows grid layouts to smoothly transition between states, instead of snapping at the halfway point of an animation or transition.

'ic' length unit

The 'ic' length unit expresses CSS lengths relative to the advanced measure of the water ideograph used in some Asian fonts such as Chinese and Japanese. This allows authors to size elements to fit a given number of full width glyphs for such fonts. Gecko and WebKit already support this unit. Adding this to Chrome is part of Interop 2022.

‘preserve-parent-color' value for the ‘forced-color-adjust' CSS property.

The 'preserve-parent-color' value has been added to the 'forced-color-adjust' CSS property. Previously, when the forced colors mode was enabled, the 'color' property was inherited. Now, when the 'preserve-parent-color' value is used, the 'color' property will use the value of its parent. Otherwise, the 'forced-color-adjust: preserve-parent-color' value behaves the same as 'forced-color-adjust: none'.

Unprefix -webkit-hyphenate-character property

Chrome now supports the unprefixed hyphenate-character property in addition to the -webkit-hyphenate-character property. The -webkit-hyphenate-character property will be deprecated at a later date.

JavaScript: Intl.NumberFormat v3 API

Intl.NumberFormat has the following new features:

• Three new functions to format a range of numbers: formatRange(), formatRangeToParts(), and selectRange()
• A grouping enum
• New rounding and precision options
• Rounding priority
• Interpretation of strings as decimals
• Rounding modes
• Sign display negative (zero shown without a negative sign)

For more information, see the original proposal's README.

SerialPort BYOB reader support

The underlying data source for a ReadableStream provided by a SerialPort is now a readable byte stream. SerialPort "bring your own buffer" (BYOB) is backwards-compatible with existing code that calls port.readable.getReader() with no parameters. To detect support for this feature, pass 'byob' as the mode parameter when calling getReader(). For example:

port.readable.getReader({ mode: 'byob' });

Older implementations will throw a TypeError when the new parameter is passed.

BYOB readers allow developers to specify the buffer into which data is read instead of the stream allocating a new buffer for each chunk. In addition to potentially reducing memory pressure, this allows the developer to control how much data is received because the stream cannot return more than there is space for in the provided buffer. For more information, see Read from and write to a serial port.

WebCodecs dequeue event

A dequeue event and associated callback have been added to the audio and video interfaces, specifically: AudioDecoder, AudioEncoder, VideoDecoder, and VideoEncoder.

Developers may initially queue encoding or decoding work by calling encode() or decode() respectively. The new dequeue event is fired to indicate when the underlying codec has ingested some or all of the queued work. The decrease in the queue size is already reflected by a lower value of encoder.encodeQueueSize and decoder.decodeQueueSize attributes. The new event eliminates the need to call setTimeout() to determine when the queue has decreased (in other words, when they should queue more work).

WebXR Raw Camera Access

Applications using the WebXR Device API can now access pose-synchronized camera image textures in the contexts that also allow interacting with other AR features provided by WebXR.

Deprecations, and Removals

This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of current deprecations and previous removals.

Remove non-ASCII characters in cookie domain attributes

To align with the latest spec (RFC 6265bis), Chromium now rejects cookies with a Domain attribute that contains non-ASCII characters (for example, éxample.com).

Support for IDN domain attributes in cookies has been long unspecified, with Chromium, Safari, and Firefox all behaving differently. This change standardizes Firefox's behavior of rejecting cookies with non-ASCII domain attributes.

Since Chromium has previously accepted non-ASCII characters and tried to convert them to normalized punycode for storage, we will now apply stricter rules and require valid ASCII (punycode if applicable) domain attributes.

Remove HTTP/2 push

Chrome has removed the ability to receive, keep in memory, and use HTTP/2 push streams sent by the server. See Removing HTTP/2 Server Push from Chrome for details and suggested alternative APIs.

Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 105 is beta as of August 5th, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

Custom Highlight API

The Custom Highlight API extends the concept of highlighting pseudo-elements by providing a way to style the text of arbitrary ranges, rather than being limited to the user agent-defined ::selection, ::inactive-selection, ::spelling-error, and ::grammar-error. This is useful in a variety of scenarios, including editing frameworks that wish to implement their own selection, find-in-page over virtualized documents, multiple selection to represent online collaboration, or spell checking frameworks.

Without this feature, web developers and framework authors are forced to modify the underlying structure of the DOM tree to achieve the rendering they desire. This is complicated in cases where the desired highlight spans across multiple subtrees, and it also requires DOM updates to adjust highlights as they change. The custom highlight API provides a programmatic way of adding and removing highlights that does not affect the underlying DOM structure, but instead applies styles to text based on range objects.

In 105, only the color and background-color pseudo elements are supported. Support for other items will be added later.

Container Queries

Container queries allow authors to style elements according to the size of a container element. This capability means that a component owns its responsive styling logic. This makes the component much more resilient, as the styling logic is attached to it, no matter where it appears on the page.

Container queries are similar to media queries, but evaluate against the size of a container rather than the size of the viewport. A known issue is that container queries do not work when an author combines it with table layout in a multicolumn layout. We expect to fix this in 106. For more information, see @container and :has(): two powerful new responsive APIs. For other CSS features in this release, see below.

:has() Pseudo Class

The :has() pseudo class specifies an element having at least one element that matches the relative selector passed as an argument. Unlike other selectors, the :has() pseudo class applies, for a specified element, a style rule to preceding elements, specifically, siblings, ancestors, and preceding siblings of ancestors. For example, the following rule matches only anchor tags that have an image tag as a child.

a:has(> img)

For more information, see @container and :has(): two powerful new responsive APIs. For other CSS features in this release, see below.

Fetch Upload Streaming

Fetch upload streaming lets web developers make a fetch with a ReadableStream body. Previously, you could only start a request once you had the whole body ready to go. But now, you can start sending data while you're still generating the content, improving performance and memory usage.

For example, an online form could initiate a fetch as soon as a user focuses a text input field. By the time the user clicks enter, fetch() headers would already have been sent. This feature also allows you to send content as it's generated on the client, such as audio and video. For more information, see Streaming requests with the fetch API.

Window Controls Overlay for Installed Desktop Web Apps

Window controls overlay extends an app's client area to cover the entire window, including the title bar, and the window control buttons (close, maximize/restore, minimize). The web app developer is responsible for drawing and input handling for the entire window except for the window controls overlay. Developers can use this feature to make their installed desktop web apps look like operating system apps. For more information, see Customize the window controls overlay of your PWA's title bar.

Origin Trials

No origin trials are beginning in this version of Chrome. However there are a number of ongoing origin trials which you can find on the Chrome Origin Trials dashboard. Origin trials allow you to try new features and give feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community. To learn more about origin trials in Chrome, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers. Microsoft Edge runs its own origin trials separate from Chrome. To learn more, see the Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Developer Console.

Completed Origin Trials

The following features, previously in a Chrome origin trial, are now enabled by default.

Media Source Extensions in Workers

The Media Source Extensions (MSE) API is now available from DedicatedWorker contexts to enable improved performance of buffering media for playback by an HTMLMediaElement on the main Window context. By creating a MediaSource object in a DedicatedWorker, an application may then obtain a MediaSourceHandle from it and call postMessage() to transfer it to the main thread for attaching to an HTMLMediaElement. The context that created the MediaSource object may then use it to buffer media.

Viewport-height Client Hint

Chrome supports the new Sec-CH-Viewport-Height client hint. This is a counterpart to the Sec-CH-Viewport-Width previously introduced in Chrome. Together they provide information about a viewport's size to an origin. To use these hints, pass Sec-CH-Viewport-Height or Sec-CH-Viewport-Width to the Accept-CH header.

Other Features in this Release

Accurate Screen Labels for Multi-Screen Window Placement

This release enhances the screen label strings provided by the Multi-Screen Window Placement API. Specifically, it refines ScreenDetailed.label property by replacing the previous placeholders with information from the device's Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) or from a higher-level operating system API. For example, instead of returning "External Display 1", the label property will now return something like "HP z27n" or "Built-in Retina Display". These more accurate labels match those shown by operating systems in display settings dialog boxes. The labels are only exposed to sites that have been granted the "window-placement" permission by the user.

CSS: Preventing Overscroll Effects for Fixed Elements

Setting an element's position CSS property to fixed (unless the element's containing block is not the root) will now prevent it from performing the effects specified by overscroll-behavior. In particular, fixed-position elements will not move during overscroll effects.

DisplayMediaStreamConstraints.systemAudio

A new constraint is being added to MediaDevices.getDisplayMedia() to indicate whether system audio should be offered to the user. User agents sometimes offer audio for capturing alongside video. But not all audio is created alike. Consider video-conferencing applications. Tab audio is often useful, and can be shared with remote participants. But system audio includes participants' own audio, and may not be appropriate to share back. To use the new constraint, pass systemAudio as a constraint. For example:

const stream = await navigator.mediaDevices.getDisplayMedia({
  video: true,
  audio: true,
  systemAudio: "exclude"  // or "include"
});

This feature is only supported on desktop.

Expose TransformStreamDefaultController

To conform with spec the TransformStreamDefaultController class is now available on the global scope. This class already exists and can be accessed using code such as

let TransformStreamDefaultController;
new TransformStream({ start(c) { TransformStreamDefaultController = c.constructor; } });

This change makes such code unnecessary since TransformStreamDefaultController is now on the global scope. Possible uses for this class include monkey patching properties onto TransformStreamDefaultController.prototype, or feature-testing existing properties of it more easily. Note that the class is not constructible. In other words, this throws an error:

new TransformStreamDefaultController()

HTML Sanitizer API

The HTML Sanitizer API is an easy to use and safe way to remove executable code from arbitrary, user-supplied content. The goal of the API is to make it easier to build web applications that are free of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities and ship part of the maintenance burden for such apps to the platform.

In this release, only basic functionality is supported, specifically Element.setHTML(). The Sanitize interface will be added at a later stage. Namespaced content (SVG + MathML) is not yet supported, only HTML. For more information on the API, see HTML Sanitizer API - Web APIs.

import.meta.resolve()

The import.meta.resolve() method returns the URL to which the passed specifier would resolve in the context of the current script. That is, it returns the URL that would be imported if you called import(). A specifier is a URL beginning with a valid scheme or one of /, ./, or ../. See the HTML spec for examples.

This method makes it easier to write scripts which are not sensitive to their exact location, or to the web application's module setup. Some of its capabilities are doable today, in a longer form, by combining new URL() and the existing import.meta.url() method. But the integration with import maps allows resolving URLs that are affected by import maps.

Improvements to the Navigation API

Chrome 105 introduces two new methods on the NavigateEvent of the Navigation API (introduced in 102) to improve on methods that have proved problematic in practice. intercept(), which let's developers control the state following the navigation, replaces transitionWhile(), which proved difficult to use. The scroll() method, which scrolls to an anchor specified in the URL, replaces restoreScroll() which does not work for all types of navigation. For explanations of the problems with the existing methods and examples of using the new, see Changes to NavigateEvent.

The transitionWhile() and restoreScroll() methods are also deprecated in this release. We expect to remove them in 108. See below for other deprecations and removals in this release.

onbeforeinput Global Event Handler Content Attribute

The nbeforeinput global content attribute is now supported in Chrome. The beforeinput form was already available via addEventListener(). Chrome now also allows feature detection by testing against document.documentElement.onbeforeinput

Opaque Response Blocking v0.1

Opaque Response Blocking (ORB) is a replacement for Cross-Origin Read Blocking (CORB). CORB and ORB are both heuristics that attempt to prevent cross-origin disclosure of "no-cors" subresources.

Picture-in-Picture API Comes to Android

The Picture-in-Picture API allows websites to create a floating video window that is always on top of other windows so that users may continue consuming media while they interact with other sites or applications on their device. This feature has been available on desktop since Chrome 70. It's now available for Chrome running on Android 11 or later. This change only applies to <video> elements. For information on using the Picture-in-Picture API, see Watch video using Picture-in-Picture.

Response.json()

The Response() constructor allows for creating the body of the response from many types; however the existing response.json() instance method does not let you directly create a JSON object. The Response.json() static method fills this gap.

Response.json() returns a new Response object and takes two arguments. The first argument takes a string to convert to JSON. The second is an optional initialization object.

Syntax Changes to Markup Based Client Hints Delegation

The syntax for the delegation of client hints to third-party content that requires client information lost by user agent reduction, which shipped in Chrome 100, is changing.

Previous syntax:
<meta name="accept-ch" value="sec-ch-dpr=(https://foo.bar https://baz.qux), sec-ch-width=(https://foo.bar)">

New syntax:
<meta http-equiv="delegate-ch" value="sec-ch-dpr https://foo.bar https://baz.qux; sec-ch-width https://foo.bar">

Writable Directory Prompts for the File System Access API

Chromium now allows returning a directory with both read and write permissions in a single prompt for the File System Access API. Previously, Window.showDirectoryPicker() returned a read-only directory (after showing a read access prompt), requiring a second prompt to get write access. This double prompt is a poor user experience and contributes to confusion and permission fatigue among users.

Deprecations, and Removals

This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of planned deprecations, current deprecations and previous removals.

Remove WebSQL in Non-secure Contexts

WebSQL in non-secure contexts is now removed. The Web SQL Database standard was first proposed in April 2009 and abandoned in November 2010. Gecko never implemented this feature and WebKit deprecated it in 2019. The W3C encourages Web Storage and Indexed Database for those needing alternatives.

Developers should expect that WebSQL itself will be deprecated and removed when usage is low enough.

CSS Default Keyword is Disallowed in Custom Identifiers

The CSS keyword 'default' is no longer allowed within CSS custom identifiers, which are used for many types of user-defined names in CSS (for example, names created by @keyframes rules, counters, @container names, custom layout or paint names). This adds 'default' to the list of names that are restricted from use in custom identifiers, specifically 'inherit', 'initial', 'unset', 'revert', and 'revert-layer'.

Deprecations in the Navigation API

The transitionWhile() and restoreScroll() methods are also deprecated in this release, and we expect to remove them in 108. Developers who need this functionality should use the new intercept() and scroll() methods. For explanations of the problems with the existing methods and examples of using the new, see Changes to NavigateEvent .

Deprecate Non-ASCII Characters in Cookie Domain Attributes

To align with the latest spec (RFC 6265bis), Chromium will soon reject cookies with a Domain attribute that contains a non-ASCII character (for example, Domain=éxample.com).
Support for IDN domain attributes in cookies has been long unspecified, with Chromium, Safari, and Firefox all behaving differently. This change standardizes Firefox's behavior of rejecting cookies with non-ASCII domain attributes.

Since Chromium has previously accepted non-ASCII characters and tried to convert them to normalized punycode for storage, we will now apply stricter rules and require valid ASCII (punycode if applicable) domain attributes.

A warning is printed to the console starting in 105. Removal is expected in 106.

Remove Gesture Scroll DOM Events

The gesture scroll DOM events have been removed from Chrome, specifically, gesturescrollstart, gesturescrollupdate and gesturescrollend. These were non-standard APIs that were added to Blink for use in plugins, but had also been exposed to the web.

Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 104 is beta as of June 23, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

Region Capture

Chrome on Desktop can now crop self-captured video tracks. Web apps are already able to capture video in a tab using getDisplayMedia(). Region capture allows web apps to crop a track and remove content from it, typically before sharing it remotely.

For example, consider a productivity web app with built-in video conferencing. During a video conference, a web app could use cropping to exclude the video conferencing portion of the screen (outlined in red below) avoiding a hall-of-mirrors effect. For more information, see Better tab sharing with Region Capture.

Media Queries Level 4 Syntax and Evaluation

Media Queries enable responsive design, and the range features that enable testing the minimum and maximum size of the viewport are used by around 80% of sites that use media queries.

The Media Queries Level 4 specification includes a new syntax for these range queries. They can now be written using ordinary mathematical comparison operators. Also supported are the logical operators or and not, and nesting and evaluation of "unknown" features. For example, a media query previously written like this:

@media (min-width: 400px) { … }

Can now be written like this:

@media (width >= 400px) { … }

For more information, see New syntax for range media queries in Chrome 104.

Origin Trials

This version of Chromium supports the origin trials described below. Origin trials allow you to try new features and give feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community. To register for any of the origin trials currently supported in Chromium, including the ones described below, visit the Chrome Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials in Chrome, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers. Microsoft Edge runs its own origin trials separate from Chrome. To learn more, see the Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Developer Console.

New Origin Trials

Focusgroup

The focusgroup CSS property improves keyboard focus navigation using the keyboard arrow keys among a set of focusable elements. Adding this feature to browsers allows web developers to control focus navigation without custom solutions that can lead to a lack of consistency, accessibility, and interoperability. Sign up here for the Microsoft Edge origin trial. It's scheduled to last through 107.

Opt Out of Credit Card Storage

Secure Payment Confirmation now supports a means for users to opt out of storing their credit card data to make later purchases easier. To use the new feature, set showOptOut to true on methodData.data, which is passed as the first parameter of the PaymentRequest() constructor. For example:

const methodata = [{ 
  …
  data: {
    …
    showOptOut: true
    …
  }
}];
const request = new PaymentRequest(methodData, details);

To see an example in context check out the demo. You can sign up here for the origin trial. It's scheduled to last through Chrome 106.

Shared Element Transitions

Shared Element Transitions enables the creation of polished transitions in single-page applications (SPAs). Minimal development effort is required by devs to make transitions look nice; they can choose to use default animation properties, or they can customize their own transition effects to achieve the desired transition experience.Transitions are set declaratively using CSS properties. For more information, see Shared Element Transitions. Visit the dashboard to sign up for the origin trial.

Completed Origin Trials

The following features, previously in a Chrome origin trial, are now enabled by default.

Speculation Rules

Speculation rules provide a mechanism for web content to permit prefetching or prerendering of certain URLs. For example:

<script type="speculationrules">
  {
    "prefetch": [
      {"source": "list", "urls": ["/weather/kitchener", "/weather/seattle", "/weather/tokyo"]}
    ]
  }
</script>

Subresource Loading with Web Bundles

Subresource loading with web bundles is a way to load many resources efficiently. To use the feature a web page declares that certain resources are provided by a web bundle at a particular URL. For example:

<script type="webbundle">
{
   "source": "https://example.com/dir/subresources.wbn",
   "resources": ["https://example.com/dir/a.js", "https://example.com/dir/b.js", "https://example.com/dir/c.png"]
}
</script>

For information on creating web bundles, see Get started with Web Bundles. For more information on subresource loading using web bundles, see Origin Trial for Subresource Loading with Web Bundles.

Other Features in this Release

Cookie Expires/Max-Age Attribute Upper Limit

When cookies are set with an explicit Expires/Max-Age attribute the value will now be capped to no more than 400 days. Previously, there was no limit and cookies could expire as much as multiple millennia in the future. This follows a change in the spec.

400 days was chosen as a round number close to 13 months. This duration ensures that sites visited roughly once a year (for example, sites for choosing health insurance benefits) will continue to work.

CSS object-view-box

The object-view-box property allows authors to specify a portion of an image that should draw within the content box of a target replaced element. This enables creation of images with a custom glow or shadow applied, with proper ink-overflow behavior such as a CSS shadow would have. For more information, see First Look At The CSS object-view-box Property.

Fullscreen Capability Delegation

Fullscreen Capability Delegation allows a Window to transfer the ability to call requestFullscreen() to another Window it trusts after relinquishing the transient user activation at the sender Window. This feature is based on the general delegation mechanism that shipped in Chrome 100.

Multi-Screen Window Placement: Fullscreen Companion Window

Fullscreen Companion Window allows sites to place fullscreen content and a popup window on separate screens from a single user activation. There is a demo available with source code on GitHub.

Permissions Policy for Web Bluetooth API

Web Bluetooth is now controllable with a Permissions Policy. The token is named "bluetooth" and has a default allowlist of 'self'.

visual-box on overflow-clip-margin

The overflow-clip-margin property specifies how far an element's content is allowed to paint before being clipped. This feature allows using visual-box values to configure the reference box that defines the overflow clip edge the content is clipped to.

Web Custom Formats for Async Clipboard API

Web Custom Formats lets websites read and write arbitrary unsanitized payloads using a standardized web custom format, as well as read and write a limited subset of OS-specific formats (for supporting legacy apps).

The name of the clipboard format is mangled by the browser in a standardized way to indicate that the content is from the web. This allows platform applications to opt-in to accepting the unsanitized content.

Some web app developers want to exchange data payloads between web and platform applications via operating system clipboards. The Clipboard API supports the most popular standardized data types (text, image, rich text) across all platforms. However, this API does not scale to the long tail of specialized formats. In particular, custom formats, non-web-standard formats like TIFF (a large image format), and proprietary formats like docx (a document format), are not supported by the current Web Platform.

WebGL Canvas Color Management

As per the spec, Chromium's implementation of WebGL now allows specifying:

• The color space of a drawing buffer.
• The color space that content should be converted to when importing as a texture.

Before this version of Chrome, both of these defaulted to sRGB. Now they can also use "display-p3".

Deprecations, and Removals

This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of current deprecations and previous removals.

Block Third-Party Contexts Navigating to Filesystem URLs

iframes can no longer navigate to filesystem URLs. Top frame support for navigating to filesystem URLs was dropped in Chrome 68.

Remove Non-Standard Client Hint Mode

Four client hints (dpr, width, viewport-width, and device-memory) have a default allowlist of self but behave as though they have a default allowlist of * on Android, contrary to the spec. This is now fixed, increasing privacy on Android by requiring explicit delegation of these hints.

Remove U2F API (Cryptotoken)

Chrome's legacy U2F API for interacting with security keys is no longer supported. U2F security keys themselves are not deprecated and will continue to work.

Affected sites should migrate to the Web Authentication API. Credentials that were originally registered via the U2F API can be challenged via web authentication. USB security keys that are supported by the U2F API are also supported by the Web Authentication API.

U2F is Chrome's original security key API. It allows sites to register public key credentials on USB security keys and challenge them for building phishing-resistant two-factor authentication systems. U2F never became an open web standard and was subsumed by the Web Authentication API (launched in Chrome 67). Chrome never directly supported the FIDO U2F JavaScript API, but rather shipped a component extension called cryptotoken, which exposes an equivalent chrome.runtime.sendMessage() method. U2F and Cryptotoken are firmly in maintenance mode and have encouraged sites to migrate to the Web Authentication API for the last two years.

Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 103 is beta as of May 26, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

Early Hints for Navigation

Chrome now supports the 103 Early Hints HTTP response code for navigation. (Note: the correspondence with the Chrome release number is a coincidence.) When a 103 response includes <link rel=preload> or other link headers Chromium tries to preload (and/or preconnect, prefetch) specified resources before the final response is received. This gives web developers a way to optimize core web vitals such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).

 
HTTP/2 introduced the concept of server push, a mechanism that allows a server to preemptively send data to the client. Server push was intended to improve site performance. In the years since, developers have generally preferred preloading from the client side of a web interaction. 103 early hints for navigation provides a new way to do that.

 
For information on the work that went into bringing this to the web, see Beyond Server Push: The 103 Early Hints Status Code.

Origin Trials

Origin trials allow you to try new features and give feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community. To register for any of the origin trials currently supported in Chrome, including the ones described below, visit the Chrome Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials in Chrome, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers. Microsoft Edge runs its own origin trials separate from Chrome. To learn more, see the Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Developer Console.

New Origin Trials

Federated Credentials Management

The Federated Credential Management API allows users to log in to websites with their federated accounts in a privacy preserving manner. It allows the browser to understand the context in which the relying party and identity provider exchange information, inform the user about the information and privilege levels being shared and prevent unintended abuse. For more information, see Participate in a Federated Credential Management API origin trial for IdPs.

Completed Origin Trials

The following features, previously in a Chrome origin trial, are now enabled by default.

Local Font Access

Web applications can now enumerate local fonts and metadata about each. The new API also gives web applications access to table data stored within local fonts, allowing those fonts to be rendered within their applications using custom text stacks.

Note: The Chrome 102 beta post erroneously listed this feature as shipping in that version.

Same-Origin Prerendering Triggered by the Speculation Rules API

Prerendering loads a web page before it is needed, so that when the actual navigation to that page occurs, it can be shown instantly. To speed up page loads. Chrome's previous prerender mechanism is now replaced with No State Prefetch. No State Prefetch doesn't generally result in an instant page load experience, but the new feature does. This feature is supported on Android only.

Update User-Agent Client Hints GREASE Implementation

The implementation of GREASE in User Agent Client Hints is now aligned with the current spec, which includes additional GREASE characters beyond the current semicolon and space, and which recommends varying the arbitrary version. This helps prevent bad assumptions from being built on top of User-Agent strings.

Other Features in this Release

AbortSignal.timeout() Static Method

Returns a new AbortSignal object that is automatically aborted after a given number of milliseconds. Use this method to easily implement timeouts for signal-accepting asynchronous APIs, such as fetch(). For example:

fetch(url, { signal: AbortSignal.timeout(10_000) });

ARIA Attribute Reflection for the role Attribute

The Element and ElementInternal interfaces now include an ARIA property called ariaRoleDescription which returns or modifies the ARIA role attribute directly. This feature is only supported on desktop.

avif is Now a Permitted Web Share File Extension

The avif image file format is now sharable by Web Share. Adding avif to the other allowed image file types helps spread the use of it. A website might like their users to be able to share pictures and other files through social media, email, chat, etc. The Web Share API is already shipped to more platforms such as ChromeOS and Windows, but avif is not supported yet.

"deflate-raw" Compression Format

Chrome supports a new compression format, deflate-raw, to give web developers access to the raw deflate stream without any headers or footers. This is needed, for example, to read and write zip files.

form rel Attribute

The 'rel' attribute has been added to form elements. This makes it possible to prevent window.opener from being present on websites navigated to by form elements which have rel=noopener. It also prevents the referer header from being sent with rel=noreferrer.

popstate Fires Before Load

Chromium now matches Firefox and by firing popstate immediately after URL changes so that the order of events is now popstate then hashchange across both platforms. Before this change, Chromium fired hashchange asynchronously after a task, and delayed popstate until the load event. This means the event order could be either hashchange then popstate, or popstate then hashchange, depending on how long a document took to load.

Restrict Gamepad Usage

The Gampepad API now requires a secure context. Additionally a new feature policy called 'gamepad' has been added with a default allowlist of 'self'.

SerialPort forget()

The SerialPort forget() method allows web developers to voluntarily revoke a permission to a serial port that was granted by a user. Some sites may not be interested in retaining long-term permissions to access serial ports. For example, for an educational web application used on a shared computer with many devices, a large number of accumulated user-generated permissions creates a poor user experience.

In addition to user agent mitigations to avoid this problem, such as defaulting to a session scoped permission on the first request or expiring infrequently used permissions, it should be possible for the site itself to clean up user-generated permissions it no longer needs.

This follows the recent additions of a forget() method for the HIDDevice and USBDevice interfaces.

Support visual-box on overflow-clip-margin

The overflow-clip-margin CSS property now supports visual-box, which specifies the box edge to use as the overflow clip edge origin. Valid values are content-box, padding-box (the default), or border-box. The overflow-clip-margin property specifies how far an element's content is allowed to paint before being clipped.

User Activation Required for SPC Credential Enrollment

A user activation requirement has been added for Secure Payment Confirmation credential enrollment in a cross-origin iframe. This is being done to help mitigate a privacy issue.

Deprecations, and Removals

This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of current deprecations and previous removals.

Block External Protocol in Sandboxed iframe

Sandboxed iframes are not blocked from opening external applications. Currently, developers sandbox untrusted content and block user navigation. Blocking probably should have also included links to external apps or to the Play store. This has now been fixed.

Sites that need navigation can add the following values to the <iframe> element's sandbox property:

• allow-popups
• allow-top-navigation
• allow-top-navigation-with-user-activation

Remove Battery Status API on Insecure Origins

The Battery Status API is no longer supported on insecure contexts, specifically HTTP pages and HTTPS iframes embedded in HTTP pages. This is being removed in accordance with our policy of deprecating powerful features on insecure origins, This also follows a spec change.

Remove <param> Element

Given the removal of plugins from the web platform, and the relative lack of use of <param>, it is being removed from the web platform.

Posted by Joseph Medley

Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 102 is beta as of April 28, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

Window Controls Overlay for Installed Desktop Web Apps

Window controls overlay extends an app's client area to cover the entire window, including the title bar, and the window control buttons (close, maximize/restore, minimize). The web app developer is responsible for drawing and input handling for the entire window except for the window controls overlay. Developers can use this feature to make their installed desktop web apps look like operating system apps. For more information, see Customize the window controls overlay of your PWA's title bar.

Completed Origin Trials

The following features, previously in a Chrome origin trial, are now enabled by default. Origin trials allow you to try new features and give feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community. To register for any of the origin trials currently supported in Chrome, including the ones described below, visit the Chrome Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials in Chrome, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers. Microsoft Edge runs its own origin trials separate from Chrome. To learn more, see the Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Developer Console.

Capture Handle

A new mechanism allows an application to opt-in to exposing information to applications that are video-capturing it. This allows collaboration between capturing and captured applications. For example, a video conference application that's video-capturing a presentation, could expose user-facing controls in the video conference tab for navigating the presentation in the captured tab.

Network State Partitioning

Network state is now partitioned by the network partition key (which consists of top frame site and possibly frame site), to protect against cross-site tracking through the use of side channels. "Network State" here includes connections (H1, H2, H3, websocket), the DNS cache, ALPN/H2 support data, TLS/H3 resumption information, Reporting/NEL configuration and uploads, and Expect-CT information. Cross-site tracking is a major privacy concern for users. This is a necessary part of addressing the problem.

Speculation Rules

Speculation rules provides a flexible syntax for defining what outgoing links are eligible to be prefetched before navigation. It also enables additional enhancements, such as use of a private prefetch proxy, where applicable.

Subresource loading with Web Bundles

This feature provides a new approach to loading a large number of resources efficiently using a format that allows multiple resources to be bundled, e.g. Web Bundles.

Other Features in this Release

File Handlers Web App Manifest Member

File Handling provides a way for web applications to declare the ability to handle files with given MIME types and extensions. The web application will receive an event when the user intends to open a file with that web application.

To define a PWA as a file handler, add the file_handlers member to the Web App Manifest. You can read about its members in the spec.

inert Attribute

The new inert attribute lets you mark parts of the DOM tree as inert. When a node is inert:

• Hit-testing must act as if the pointer-events CSS property were set to 'none'.
• Text selection functionality must act as if the user-select CSS property were set to 'none'.
• If it is editable, the node behaves as if it were non-editable.
• The user agent may ignore the node for the purposes of find-in-page.

For more information, see Introducing inert.

Local Font Access

Web applications can now enumerate local fonts and metadata about each. The new API also gives web applications access to table data stored within local fonts, allowing those fonts to be rendered within their applications using custom text stacks.

Notes: This feature actually shipped in 103 instead of 102 as originally reported.

Navigation API

The new Navigation interface (accessible on window) lets apps intercept and initiate navigations, and introspect an application's history entries. This provides a more useful alternative to window.history and window.location specifically aimed at the needs of single-page web applications.

New until-found Value for the hidden Attribute

Chrome adds a new value, until-found, for the hidden attribute, which makes an element searchable by find-in-page, scroll to text fragment, and fragment navigation. When these search/navigation features want to scroll to something inside a hidden=until-found element, the browser removes the hidden attribute from the element and fires the beforematch event on it so that the newly revealed content can be scrolled into view. For more information, see Making collapsed content accessible with hidden=until-found - Chrome Developers.

Origin Private File System extension: AccessHandle

The Origin Private File System (part of the File System Access API) is augmented with a new surface that improves the performance of data access. This new surface differs from existing ones by offering in-place and exclusive write access to a file's content. This change, along with the ability to consistently read unflushed modifications and the availability of a synchronous variant on dedicated workers, significantly improves performance and unblocks new use cases.

Private Network Access Preflight Requests for Subresources

A CORS preflight request is now sent ahead of schedule for private network requests for subresources, requesting explicit permission from the target server. If the preflight fails, a warning is displayed in DevTools but the request proceeds as before. This is not expected to be a breaking change. Websites whose servers ignore or fail the new preflight request will continue to work as before.

A private network request is any request from a public website to a private IP address or localhost, or from a private website (e.g. intranet) to localhost. Sending a preflight request mitigates the risk of cross-site request forgery attacks against private network devices such as routers, which are often not prepared to defend against this threat.

Secure Payment Confirmation API Changes

This release contains three changes to the Secure Payment Confirmation API, specifically to the data passed to the PaymentMethod() constructor.

• A new required property, data.rpId, which should contain the relying party ID. Implementations that don't currently specify this will need to be updated.
• A new optional property, data.instrument.iconMustBeShown, allows a placeholder icon to be used when the card art icon cannot be downloaded. Setting this field to false allows a payment to proceed when the icon can be downloaded. The default is true.
• A new optional property, data.payeeName, allows callers to display a natural name for the payee instead of or alongside the existing data.payeeOrigin.

WebHID exclusionFilters Option in requestDevice()

The options object passed HID.requestDevice() now includes an exclusionFilters property. (HID is accessed via navigator.hid.) This property lets you exclude some devices from the browser picker. You can use it to exclude devices that are known to be malfunctioning. Previously, developers had to test a selected device with custom code, then ask the user to pick another if the selected device did not work. The exclusionFilters property (you will need to search for that term in the text) is an array of objects with the same members as the existing options.

Here's an example of how to use the requestDevice() options argument. The example first requests access to a device with vendor ID 0xABCD. The device must also have a collection with usage page Consumer (0x000C) and usage ID Consumer Control (0x0001). The device with product ID 0x1234 is malfunctioning.

const [device] = await navigator.hid.requestDevice({
 filters: [{ vendorId: 0xabcd, usagePage: 0x000c, usage: 0x0001 }],
 exclusionFilters: [{ vendorId: 0xabcd, productId: 0x1234 }],
});

Deprecations, and Removals

This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of current deprecations and previous removals.

Deprecate PaymentRequest.show() without User Activation

Sites can no longer call PaymentRequest.show() without a user activation. Allowing PaymentRequest.show() to be triggered without a user activation could be abused by malicious websites. To protect users, the spec was changed to require user activation. To avoid a broken purchase experience, calls to this method should now be inside a user event such as click.

Firefox has not shipped PaymentRequest at all, while Safari's implementation already requires user activation for calling show().

Remove SDP Plan B

The Session Description Protocol (SDP) used to establish a session in WebRTC has been implemented with two different dialects in Chromium: Unified Plan and Plan B. Plan B is not cross-browser compatible and is hereby removed.

In this version of Chrome an exception will be thrown when Plan B is used. Developers needing to avoid the exception can participate in a deprecation trial until May 25, 2022. If you participated in the previous deprecation trial that ended in December, and want to participate in the current trial, you will need to request a new token.

Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 101 is beta as of March 31, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

Reduce User Agent String Information

Chrome is trying to reduce the amount of information the user agent string exposes in HTTP requests as well as in navigator.userAgent, navigator.appVersion, and navigator.platform. We're doing this to prevent the user agent string from being used for passive user fingerprinting. To join the origin trial, see its entry on Chrome Origin Trials. See the end of this article for additional deprecations and removals.

Origin Trials

This version of Chrome introduces the origin trial described below. Origin trials allow you to try new features and give feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community. To register for any of the origin trials currently supported in Chrome, including the ones described below, visit the Chrome Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials in Chrome, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers. Microsoft Edge runs its own origin trials separate from Chrome. To learn more, see the Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Developer Console.

New Origin Trial

Federated Credential Management API

Federated Credential Management API (FedCM) aims to create privacy-preserving identity federation and is designed to make identity federation continue to allow use cases without the need for cross-site tracking such as third-party cookies. This feature starts its origin trial in 101 on Android only. We expect to add desktop support in Chrome 102.

Completed Origin Trials

The following feature, previously in a Chrome origin trial, is now enabled by default.

Priority Hints

Priority Hints provides a way to indicate a resource's relative importance to the browser, allowing more control over the order resources are loaded.

Other Features in this Release

AudioContext.outputLatency

AudioContext.outputLatency property is an estimation in seconds of the interval between when the user agent requests a host system to play a buffer and when the first sample in the buffer is processed by the audio output device. For devices such as speakers or headphones that produce an acoustic signal, 'processed by the audio output device' refers to the time when a sample's sound is produced. This property helps developers compensate for the latency between the input and the output. It's also useful for synchronization of video and audio streams.

This property is already implemented in Firefox.

font-palette and Custom @font-palette-values Palettes

The font-palette CSS property allows selecting a palette from a color font. In combination with the @font-palette-values at-rule, custom palettes can be defined. This feature is useful in designs where an icon or emoji font is used with dark or light mode, or when using multi-colored icon fonts that use the font-palette to harmonize with the content's color scheme.

hwb() CSS function

HWB (short for 'hue whiteness blackness') is another method of specifying sRGB colors, similar to HSL, but often even easier for humans to work with. The hwb() function specifies HWB values in CSS. The function takes three arguments. The first, hue, specifies hue in degrees (not constrained to the range [0, 360]). The next two, whiteness and blackness, are specified as percentages.

Make Popup Argument for window.open() Evaluate to 'true'

This feature follows a recent change to the spec for parsing the popup argument for window.open(). Previously, when popup was set equal to true, window.open() was interpreted to mean false. This is counterintuitive and confusing. This change makes boolean features easier to use and understand.

MediaCapabilities API for WebRTC

The MediaCapabilities API has been extended to support WebRTC streams. The MediaCapabilities API helps websites make informed decisions on what codec, resolution, etc. to use for video playback by indicating whether a configuration is supported and also whether the playback is expected to be smooth.
Without this feature, web apps need to guess about suitable configurations. This can result in poor quality such as when an application uses low resolution or frame rates unnecessarily, or stuttering when the frame rate is too high.

Secure Payment Confirmation API V3

The following features from version three of the Secure Payment Confirmation API are now implemented:

• A relying party ID that is a required input. Because this is required, existing code will need to be updated.
• An optional boolean to allow failed instrument icon download.
• A payeeName property as an optional input.

USBDevice forget()

The USBDevice forget() method allows web developers to voluntarily revoke a permission to a USBDevice that was granted by a user.

WebUSB sameObject Behavior

USBConfiguration, USBInterface, USBAlternateInterface, and USBEndpoint instances are now only strictly equal ("===") when they are retrieved from accessors on the same USBDevice.

Deprecations, and Removals

This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of current deprecations and previous removals.

Remove WebSQL in Third-Party Contexts

WebSQL in third-party contexts is now removed. The Web SQL Database standard was first proposed in April 2009 and abandoned in November 2010. Gecko never implemented this feature and WebKit deprecated it in 2019. The W3C encourages Web Storage and Indexed Database for those needing alternatives.

Developers should expect that WebSQL itself will be deprecated and removed when usage is low enough.

Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 100 is beta as of March 3. 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

Last Version for Unreduced User-Agent String

Chromium 100 will be the last version to support an unreduced User-Agent string by default (as well as the related navigator.userAgent, navigator.appVersion, and navigator.platform DOM APIs). The origin trial that allowed sites to test the fully reduced User-Agent will end on April 19, 2022. After that date, the User-Agent String will be gradually reduced. To review the whole schedule, see Chromium Blog: User-Agent Reduction Origin Trial and Dates. Sites that need more time to test or migrate to User-Agent Client Hints can enroll in the deprecation origin trial scheduled from Chrome 100 to 113, inclusive. In contrast to the first origin trial, which previews the fully reduced User-Agent string, the deprecation trial maintains the legacy User-Agent. The deprecation trial is expected to end in late May of 2023.

This is part of a strategy to replace use of the User-Agent string with the
new User-Agent Client Hints API. To learn about User-Agent Client Hints, see Migrate to User-Agent Client Hints and Improving user privacy and developer experience with User-Agent Client Hints.

Multi-Screen Window Placement

The Multi-Screen Window Placement API, now available on desktop, lets you enumerate the displays connected to your machine and to place windows on specific screens. This unlocks use cases like multi-window apps that need to accurately position certain windows. It also adds a new screen option to the Element.requestFullscreen() method which allows you to determine which screen to start a full screen view on.

 

New use cases include:

• A slideshow app presenting on a projector, while showing speaker notes on a laptop screen.
• A financial app opening a dashboard of windows across multiple monitors.
• A medical app opening images (for example, x-rays) on a high-resolution grayscale display.
• A creativity app showing secondary windows (for example, a palette) on a separate screen.
• Multi-screen layouts in gaming, signage, artistic, and other types of apps.

For more information, see Managing several displays with the Multi-Screen Window Placement API.

Origin Trials

This version of Chrome introduces the origin trials described below. Origin trials allow you to try new features and give feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community. To register for any of the origin trials currently supported in Chrome, including the ones described below, visit the Chrome Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials in Chrome, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers. Microsoft Edge runs its own origin trials separate from Chrome. To learn more, see the Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Developer Console.

Continuing Origin Trials

The following origin trial is being extended to the listed version.

Media Source Extensions in Workers

Chrome is continuing an origin trial for making the Media Source Extensions (MSE) API available from dedicated workers. This feature improves performance when buffering playing media in an HTMLMediaElement on the main Window. By creating a MediaSource object in a dedicated worker, an application may then create an ObjectURL for it and call postMessage() to pass that URL to the main thread for attaching to an HTMLMediaElement. The context that created the MediaSource object may then use it to buffer media. Web authors have consistently requested that MSE be available from Worker contexts. This extended origin trial is expected to end in Chrome 103, in late July 2022.

Completed Origin Trials

The following feature, previously in a Chrome origin trial, is now enabled by default.

Digital Goods API

Chrome now provides an API for querying and managing digital products to facilitate in-app purchases from web applications. The new API works with the Payment Request API, which is used for the actual purchases. The API can be linked to a digital distribution service connected through the user agent. In Chromium, this is specifically a web API wrapper around the Android Play Billing API.

This API lets web apps in the Play Store accept purchases for digital goods. (Play policies prevent them from accepting payment via any other method.) Without this, websites that sell digital goods are not installable through the Play Store.

For more information, see Receive Payments via Google Play Billing with the Digital Goods API and the Payment Request API - Chrome Developers.

Other Features in this Release

AbortSignal.prototype.throwIfAborted()

Chrome now throws an AbortSignal object's reason if the signal is aborted. This convenience method allows signal-handling functions to check a signal's abort status and propagate the abort reason. For example, it could be called after asynchronous operations that might change a signal's state.

Abort signal handling functions often need to check the signal's status and propagate the error if the signal has been aborted. This provides a convenient and consistent way to do this. An example is already available on MDN.

Capability Delegation

Capability delegation means allowing a frame to relinquish its ability to call a restricted API and transfer that ability to a (sub) frame it trusts. If an app wants to delegate its ability to call a restricted JavaScript feature (for example, popups, or fullscreen) to a known and trusted third-party frame, this API allows it to transfer this ability to the target frame for a specified period. This is in contrast to static mechanisms such as an iframe's allow attributes.

Many merchant websites host their online store on their own domain but outsource the payment collection and processing infrastructure to a payment service provider (PSP) to comply with security and regulatory complexities around card payments. This workflow is implemented as a "pay" button inside the top (merchant) frame where it can blend better with the rest of the merchant's website, and payment request code inside a cross-origin iframe from the PSP. The Payment Request API used by the PSP code is gated by transient user activation (to prevent malicious attempts like unattended or repeated payment requests). Because the top (merchant) frame's user interaction is not visible to the iframe, the PSP code needs to delegate in response to a click in the top frame before it can start payment processing.

HIDDevice forget()

The HIDDevice forget() method allows web developers to voluntarily revoke a permission to an HIDDevice that was granted by a user. Some sites may not be interested in retaining long-term permissions to access HID devices. For example, for an educational web application used on a shared computer with many devices, a large number of accumulated user-generated permissions creates a poor user experience.

In addition to user agent mitigations to avoid this problem, such as defaulting to a session scoped permission on the first request or expiring infrequently used permissions, it should be possible for the site itself to clean up user-generated permissions it no longer needs.

mix-blend-mode: "plus-lighter"

The mix-blend-mode property now supports the "plus-lighter" value, which adds the source and destination colors multiplied by their respective alphas. This operation is useful when crossfading between two elements that contain common pixels. In that case, "plus-lighter" ensures that the common pixels do not change in appearance as opacity changes from 0 to 1 on one element and from 1 to 0 on the other.

Sec-CH-UA-WoW64 Client Hint

This hint serves solely as a backwards compatible shim for sites relying on "WoW64-ness" (32-bit apps running in 64-bit Windows) as they transition from the User-Agent string to UA-CH. It returns a boolean value.

SerialPort Integration with WritableStream Controller's Abort Signal

When using WritableStream, serial ports can now be closed without waiting for all write operations to finish. If the port is waiting for the peer device to provide a flow control signal it could be blocked indefinitely. The intent of aborting a WritableStream is to immediately stop writing data to the underlying sink.

TLS ALPN Extension in wss-schemed WebSockets Connections

The TLS ALPN extension is now included when initiating a new connection for wss-schemed WebSockets, offering just the default "http/1.1" protocol. Currently, unlike HTTPS connections, such connections do not offer ALPN at all. Changing this aligns with Firefox and Safari, hardens against cross-protocol attacks (ALPACA, for example), and makes wss eligible for the false start optimization. It also simplifies work on the HTTPS DNS record.

Web NFC: NDEFReader makeReadOnly()

The NDEFReader makeReadOnly() method allows web developers to make NFC tags permanently read-only with Web NFC.

WebTransport serverCertificateHashes Option

In WebTransport, the serverCertificateHashes option allows a website to connect to a web transport server by authenticating the certificate against the expected certificate hash instead of using the Web public key infrastructure (PKI).

This feature allows Web developers to connect to WebTransport servers that would normally find obtaining a publicly trusted certificate challenging, such as hosts that are not publically routable, or virtual machines that are ephemeral in nature.

Deprecations, and Removals

This version of Chrome has only one deprecation, described at the top of this article.
Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of ongoing deprecations and previous removals.

Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 99 is beta as of February 3, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

Preparing for Chrome 100

This year, Chrome will release version 100, adding a digit to the version number reported in Chrome's user agent string. To help site owners test for the new string, Chrome 96 introduced a runtime flag that causes Chrome to return '100' in its user agent string. This new flag called chrome://flags/#force-major-version-to-100 has been available since Chrome 96. For more information, see Force Chrome major version to 100 in the User-Agent string.

CSS Cascade Layers

CSS cascade layers (@layer rule and layered @import syntax) provide a structured way to organize and balance concerns within a single origin. Rules within a single cascade layer cascade together without interleaving with style rules outside the layer. This allows authors to achieve a certain cascade ordering for same-origin rules in a proper way.

Cascade layers allow authors to create layers to represent element defaults, third-party libraries, themes, components, overrides, etc.—and are able to re-order the cascade of layers in an explicit way. Without cascade layers, authors need to tweak, e.g., selector specificity, @import or source ordering to achieve a certain cascade ordering, which is cumbersome and error-prone.

For more information, see Cascade layers are coming to your browser.

New showPicker() Method on HTMLInputElement Objects

The new showPicker() method on HTMLInputElement allows web developers to programmatically show a browser picker for input elements (temporal, color, file, and those with suggestions like datalist or autofill).

Developers have been asking for years for a way to programmatically open a browser date picker. Without it, they've had to rely on custom widget libraries and CSS hacks for specific browsers.

This is currently possible in some browsers, for some controls, via the click() method. Unfortunately, that doesn't work in all browsers, making the experience inconsistent across systems and users. Providing showPicker() gives developers a supported alternative to click(), and aligns Chromium's click() behavior with the specification and other browsers in in the future. For more information, see Show a browser picker for date, time, color, and files.

Origin Trials

This version of Chrome introduces the origin trials described below. Origin trials allow you to try new features and give feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community. To register for any of the origin trials currently supported in Chrome, including the ones described below, visit the Chrome Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials in Chrome, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers. Microsoft Edge runs its own origin trials separate from Chrome. To learn more, see the Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Developer Console.

New Origin Trials

Dark Mode Support for Web Apps

Web app manifests now support the color_scheme_dark field for specifying a different theme color and background color for dark mode. Currently in the web app manifest, only a single theme color and background color can be defined. This means there is no way for apps to specify a different color to use for dark mode.

Completed Origin Trials

The following features, previously in a Chrome origin trial, are now enabled by default.

Handwriting Recognition API

This API lets web applications use handwriting recognition services that are available on operating systems to recognize hand-written text in real time. This reduces the need for third-party integration by apps that use handwriting recognition. For more information, see Recognize your users' handwriting.

Window Controls Overlay for Installed Desktop Web Apps

Window controls overlay extends an app's client area to cover the entire window, including the title bar, and the window control buttons (close, maximize/restore, minimize). The web app developer is responsible for drawing and input-handling for the entire window except for the window controls overlay. Developers can use this feature to make their installed desktop web apps look like operating system apps. For more information, see Customize the window controls overlay of your PWA's title bar.

Other Features in this Release

Allow infinity, -infinity and NaN in CSS calc()

To improve conformance with the spec, the CSS calc() method now allows infinity and NaN using the 'infinity', '-infinity', and 'NaN' keywords or expressions that can be evaluated as such, for example: 'calc(1/0)'.

CSS Color Adjust: 'only' Keyword for color-scheme

Note: This feature was erroneously listed as shipping in Chrome 98. It actually shipped in Chrome 99.

The only keyword, which has been re-added to the specification for color-scheme, is now supported in Chrome. It allows opting out of color-scheme for single, specific elements. For example, this allows overriding of force darkening. A few examples illustrate its use.

div { color-scheme: light }

This forces the div element out of color-scheme dark.

div { color-scheme: only light }

This keeps the color-scheme for the element light as above, and opts it out of forced darkening by the user agent.

document.adoptedStyleSheets is Now Mutable

In compliance with the spec, the document.adoptedStyleSheets property is now mutable, meaning operations such as push() and pop() work on it. The previous implementation of adoptedStyleSheets was unwieldy. For example, to add a sheet, the entire array had to be re-assigned:

document.adoptedStyleSheets = [...adoptedStyleSheets, newSheet];

With the new implementation, the same operation looks like this:

document.adoptedStyleSheets.push(newSheet);

Note: Previously, this feature was incorrectly listed as shipping in Chrome 98.

Improve Alignment with Spec for Exposing nextHopProtocol Across Origin Boundaries

The PerformanceResourceTiming interface exposes the nextHopProtocol property to describe the underlying connection type used to fetch a resource. To follow the spec, Chrome is removing an old special case where cross-origin requests exposed potentially sensitive information, putting users at risk.

New Canvas 2D Features

Chrome has added several new attributes to the CanvasRenderingContext2D interface to conform to specs:

• ContextLost and ContextRestored events
• "willReadFrequently" option for canvases where lots of readback is expected
• More CSS text modifier support
• A reset() method
• A roundRect draw primitive
• Conic gradients
• Better support for SVG filters

For more information, see It's always been you Canvas2D.

Unprefixed text-emphasis Properties

Chrome 99 introduces unprefixed versions of text emphasis CSS properties, specifically: "text-emphasis", "text-emphasis-color", "text-emphasis-position", and "text-emphasis-style" CSS properties. These are unprefixed versions of "-webkit-text-emphasis", "-webkit-text-emphasis-color", "-webkit-text-emphasis-position", and "-webkit-text-emphasis-style".

Deprecations, and Removals

This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of current deprecations and previous removals.

Remove Battery Status API on Insecure Origins

Battery Status API is no longer supported on insecure origins, such as HTTP pages or HTTPS iframes embedded in HTTP pages. The Battery Status API allows web developers to access, among other things, a system's battery charging level and whether it is being charged. It is a powerful feature that has been around for over a decade and, as such, was originally designed with different security constraints.

Remove font-family -webkit-standard

This version of Chrome removes support for the font-family value "-webkit-standard". This value is merely an alias for the proprietary keyword "-webkit-body" and is only exposed because it's inherited from WebKit. Removing this improves alignment with the CSS specifications and with Firefox.

Remove GamepadList

The navigator.getGamepads() method now returns an array of Gamepad objects instead of a GamepadList. GamepadList is no longer supported in Chrome. This brings Chrome in line with spec and with Gecko and Webkit. For information on Gamepads generally, see Play the Chrome dino game with your gamepad.

Update WebCodecs to Match Spec

Chrome has removed two items because of recent changes in the WebCodecs spec..

The EncodedVideoChunkOutputCallback() method takes an EncodedVideoChunkMetadata dictionary. Previously a member called temporalLayerId was located at EncodedVideoChunkMetadata.temporalLayerId. In conformance with the spec, it is now located at EncodedVideoChunkMetadata.SvcOutputMetadata.temporalLayerId.

The spec requires that the VideoFrame() constructor include a timestamp argument (VideoFrameInit.timestamp) for CanvasImageSource types that don't implicitly have a timestamp (e.g. HTMLCanvasElement). Failing to include the timestamp should result in a TypeError, but Chrome previously defaulted the timestamp to zero. This seems helpful, but is problematic if you then send the VideoFrame to a VideoEncoder, where timestamps are used to guide bitrate control.