Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers come with Chrome flags, which are experimental features that Google hasn’t enabled by default. In this article, we’ll tell you five useful Chrome flags that will improve your browsing experience on Chrome or any other Chromium-based browser like Microsoft Edge.
Top 5 Chrome Flags to Use in Google Chrome
Google regularly tests new features for Chrome that aren’t yet part of the browser by default. However, one can enable them manually with a few simple clicks. While hundreds of experimental features are available as flags, below are five handy Chrome flags that will improve your daily browsing.
1. Faster Downloads
If you have used third-party download managers before, you might have noticed that these browsers use multi-threading techniques to speed up downloads. In layman’s terms, they download the file in pieces parallelly instead of a single big chunk.
The parallel downloading flag enables the same technique in Chrome and helps accelerate the overall download speed.
Steps to Use:
- Enter chrome://flags in the search bar.
- On the next page, search for “parallel download.”
- Click the drop-down menu beside Parallel Downloading and change it to Enabled.
- Restart the browser.
2. Tab Hover Cards
Imagine working with a dozen tabs and getting confused about which one is being used for what work. Tab Hover flag solves this problem by showing a tab’s preview whenever you hover the mouse over it.
Using it, you can quickly know which tabs are important and which ones aren’t and can be closed. This saves you the hassle of opening each tab separately.
Steps to Use:
- Enter chrome://flags in the search bar.
- On the next page, search for “tab hover.”
- Enable Tab Hover Cards and Tab Hover Cards Images.
- Restart the browser.
Want to organize tabs in groups? Please read our guide on making Tab Groups in Google Chrome.
3. Global Media Controls
The Global Media Controls flag gives you a shortcut to control the media being played in the browser. For instance, you can pause, play, and change tracks being played on YouTube directly through the toolbar’s shortcut, without even opening the YouTube window.
Steps to Use:
- Enter chrome://flags in the search bar.
- On the next page, search for “global media.”
- Enable the flag for Global Media Controls.
- Restart the browser.
4. Force Dark Mode
As the name says, this flag forces a dark theme across the web content. If you have an eye strain problem or can’t stop craving for the dark mode, enable it, and all the content on webpages will automatically be rendered using a dark theme.
Steps to Use:
- Enter chrome://flags in the search bar.
- On the next page, search for “force dark.”
- Enable the flag for Force Dark Mode for Web Contents.
- Restart the browser.
5. Smooth Scrolling
This Chrome flag improves the scrolling experience while browsing. It reduces all the jitters that you may witness while scrolling content and also increases the overall responsiveness. Alongside, Chrome also lets you enable smooth scrolling for PDF files in the browser.
Steps to Use:
- Enter chrome://flags in the search bar.
- On the next page, search for “smooth scrolling.”
- Enable the flags for Smooth Scrolling and Smooth Scrolling for PDF.
- Restart the browser.
Wrapping Up
These were five very handy Chrome flags that will help you in day to day browsing. My personal favorite is Global Media Controls, which lets me control the music playback without switching tabs. Anyway, which one did you like? Have anything else to add? Do let me know in the comments below.