Chrome Android Features Speed Up Browsing

Mobile web browsing is all about finding what y’all demand quickly and with as picayune hassle every bit possible — well, in theory, anyway. In the real world, the human activity of surfing sites from your smartphone is oftentimes anything but efficient.

From sites that have non-then-friendly mobile interfaces to browser commands that take far too many steps to execute, hopping around the Earth Broad Internuts from a handheld device tin can frequently leave something to be desired.

Fearfulness not, though, my fellow finger-tappers: There are plenty of tricks you can acquire to make your mobile spider web journey more pleasant and productive. Endeavor these next-level tips for Google’s Chrome Android browser and get ready for a much amend mobile browsing experience.

1. Switch tabs the simpler way

Offset things first: Got multiple tabs open? Move between ’em with minimal endeavour past sliding your finger horizontally across the address bar. You’ll be zapping betwixt sites in seconds.

2. Manage tabs similar a pro

For more advanced tab management, swipe downwards on a tab, starting at the accost bar. That’ll take you to Chrome’due south tab overview interface, where you can see all of your open tabs as cards.

From at that place, tap on whatsoever tab to jump to it, swipe sideways on information technology to close it, or touch and hold it to drag information technology to a different place in the interface. You tin even drag a tab on acme of another tab to create a group and keep all of your open stuff organized.

JR Raphael/IDG

iii. Shut all of your tabs at once

When you lot have tons of tabs open up and want to clean firm chop-chop, tap the 3-dot menu icon within that aforementioned tab overview interface — and whaddya know? There’s a handy hidden control there for closing all of your tabs in one vicious swoop.

iv. Copy a site’s URL in no fourth dimension

Sure, you lot tin copy a site’s accost by opening the main Chrome carte du jour, selecting “Share,” and then selecting “Re-create to clipboard” from the list that appears — merely sweet sassy molassey, that certain seems like a lot of steps.

Snag a URL with less piece of work by tapping the accost bar at the superlative of the screen and then hitting the copy icon (what looks like 2 overlapping rectangles) straight next to the page’s URL.

5. Share with a single step

Sharing a page is probably the command I use more than than any other in Chrome on Android, whether I’m sending something to a friend or colleague, saving it into my notes for afterward reference, or emailing information technology to random strangers. (Hey, we all have our quirks.) And yet, that blasted sharing button is never as readily available as it oughta be.

Well, hither’s the fix: With 1 quick aligning to Chrome’southward nether-the-hood settings, you lot tin can enable a permanently present one-tap button for sharing a page from the browser to anywhere else on your phone. Information technology’ll save you precious fourth dimension, and there’due south absolutely no downside.

Equally of this writing, you’ll need to dig a little deep to activate the associated setting:

• To showtime, blazon
  chrome:flags
  into Chrome’s address bar on your phone.
• Type
  push
  into the search box at the acme of the screen that comes up.
• Find the particular labeled “Adaptive button in top toolbar” and tap the “Default” box beneath it.
• Change that setting to “Enabled Always Share,” then tap the blue Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen.

Once Chrome restarts itself, yous’ll meet a spiffy new dedicated sharing button right at the top of the browser. Much easier, no?

6. Share a link to specific text within a web page

When it comes to website sharing, a link alone isn’t always enough. Sometimes, you want to point someone to a specific section of text
within
a page — and typically, at that place’s no great way to do that.

Or and then you’d think. When such a need next arises, press and hold your finger to the text in question within the page in Chrome. Use the selectors to highlight the exact surface area of text you lot want, then tap “Share” in the menu correct higher up the words.

Click the button to copy the link or use one of the other bachelor sharing options to send it to another app, and the link volition be particularly structured and so that the page volition automatically coil down to your selected text and highlight it every bit soon as it’s opened (provided it’s opened in either Chrome or Edge) — similar this:

JR Raphael/IDG

Point fabricated, seconds saved.

seven. Ship a link to one of your other devices

Forget sharing with other people for a minute: What near when you need to ship a link to
yourself
— from your phone to a computer or perchance even another Android device?

The Chrome Android app has a handy option that’ll handle that for you. All you’ve gotta do is tap the share icon within the main Chrome carte (or at the elevation of your browser, if you followed our earlier tip!) and and so select “Send to your devices” from the card that shows up.

That’ll requite you a listing of available devices where you’re signed into Chrome, and once y’all select any of ’em, your current page volition pop upward on that device as a notification — no wires or self-emailing required.

Who knew?!

8. Edit and mark up screenshots with minimal effort

Sometimes, a motion picture tin exist worth a thousand words (or at least a couple hundred). If you feel the urge to capture and share a screenshot of something y’all’re viewing in Chrome, brand a mental note: You can do information technology from right within the browser and rely on Chrome’south born tools for editing and annotating your screenshot without always having to leave that surroundings.

Just hit that share control again, and this time, look for the “Screenshot” option in the bill of fare that appears at the lesser of the screen. Tap it, and you’ll find yourself in a fancy editor where you can crop, add in text, and draw all over your image as needed.

JR Raphael/IDG

Once yous’re finished, it’s but ane more tap — of the “Next” command at the top of the screen — to either save your creation locally or share it to any other destination on your phone.

9. Save a page for offline viewing

The next time you’re about to head onto a flying, into a tunnel, or into a time machine that’southward transporting you back to an era without Wi-Fi, program ahead and save some manufactures for your offline reading enjoyment.

Yous’d probably never know information technology, only Chrome actually makes that piece of cake to practise: While viewing any web folio, open the master Chrome menu — past pressing the iii-dot icon in the app’southward upper-right corner — and tap the downwards-facing pointer icon at the meridian. And that’south it: Chrome will save the entire page offline for you. Whenever y’all want to find it, just open up that same carte du jour and select “Downloads.”

All of your saved pages will be there and waiting, regardless of what place, year, or dimension y’all happen to exist visiting.

ten. Convert a page into a PDF

Perhaps yous want to make a more than permanent and easily shareable offline re-create of a spider web folio. Hey, no problem: Just salve it equally a PDF.

Open Chrome’s principal menu while viewing the folio, then select “Share” followed past “Print.” Make sure the printer is prepare to “Salvage as PDF” — if you see some other printer proper noun at the summit of the screen, tap information technology to change information technology — and and then tap the circular blueish icon in the screen’s upper-right corner and hit the “Save” button on the next screen.

All you accept to practice next is open your phone’s Downloads app or your favorite Android file manager to find the certificate.

xi. Deed on text within a web page

Why waste material energy typing things into Chrome when you can only tap to find what you need? Anytime you see text on a spider web page that you want to human action on, press and agree your finger on the words — then apply the sliders that appear to adapt what’s selected.

Chrome will pop up a small menu with options to perform a web search on the phrase or to share information technology to any other app on your device (like a messaging service or note-taking app, for instance). If you’re using 2017’s Android eight.0 release or higher — and at this bespeak, you’d improve exist! — the organisation should too automatically recognize and offer advisable 1-impact suggestions for things like phone numbers, physical addresses, and e-mail addresses.

JR Raphael/IDG

12. Search without stopping

At that place’due south an even simpler fashion to perform a web search when you lot simply need a quick peek at the information: Highlight the phrase you want to look upward, as described in the previous tip — and and so look for the Google bar that appears at the lesser of your screen.

Either tap that bar or slide up on information technology, and you’ll exist able to glance at the results for the term right on top of the page you lot’re already viewing. Yous can then tap on any issue you see to open it in a new tab, tap the icon in the upper-right corner of the console to open
that
as a new tab, or slide your finger down on the panel to shut it birthday.

JR Raphael/IDG

xiii. Get answers right in Chrome’southward address bar

Sometimes, y’all don’t even need to open up a thing to go the information you crave. The Chrome Android browser is able to serve up instant answers right within its address bar — so if, for instance, you desire to know how old Mark Zuckerberg is (the correct answer is always “old enough to know better”) or how much $25 is in euros, just type the question directly into the box at the tiptop of your browser. Chrome will requite you the info right and so and there, and y’all can go right back to any else y’all were doing without having to load some other page.

14. Preview a link earlier y’all commit

I don’t know about you, but I tend to open up up an awful lot of links while I’chiliad looking around the web. And more often than not, I finish up looking at the resulting pages for approximately 2.7 seconds before deciding to close ’em and movement on.

The Chrome Android app has an incredibly useful command that saves me tons of time with that manner of browsing. Just open up any web page (heck, even this one!) and press and hold your finger on any link y’all come across.

Select the “Preview page” choice from the menu that appears, and there ya have information technology: You can see the linked page in an overlay console, but like with the search results in our earlier tip. Y’all tin then tap the box-with-an-pointer icon in the console’s upper-right corner to open it every bit its own tab and slide it downward (or tap the “x” in its title bar) to dismiss it entirely.

Convenient, wouldn’t ya say?

15. Detect what you demand faster

Chrome has a hidden way to scan a page for a particular term without much effort: Open the browser’s main bill of fare, select “Find in page,” and type in the term you want. Hitting the down arrow at the top of screen one time — and then, instead of hitting that same pointer over and over to see every place the term appears, slide your finger down the vertical bar at the right side of the screen.

That’ll movement you rapidly through the page, with every instance of your term highlighted for hassle-free viewing.

16. Zoom unmarried-handedly

Pinch-to-zoom is, like, so 2013. When yous’re using your phone with a unmarried manus, as so many of us tend to do these days, Chrome has two far easier methods of magnifying a specific part of your screen.

Beginning, on many devices, you can simply double-tap anywhere on a page to zoom into that surface area and have information technology take up the full width of your brandish. Double-borer a second fourth dimension will then zoom back out.

2nd — and especially nifty — you can double-tap and leave your finger down, so drag downward to zoom in or upward to zoom out. It sounds a bit strange, simply give it a try; it’ll get y’all where you need to go without all the awkward finger yoga that comes with one-handed pinching.

(Note that these advanced zooming methods won’t work on all spider web pages; generally, if a site is already optimized for mobile viewing, you’ll exist limited to the regular ol’ pinching action. But more often than not, the need to zoom comes upward when a site isn’t properly optimized — or when yous’re deliberately viewing the desktop version of a site — and that’s when these techniques are typically available.)

17. Zoom where you wanna zoom

For some inexplicable reason, lots of websites preclude yous from zooming in on your mobile device in any manner. And for a variety of reasons — whether you lot want to make the text larger or go a closer look at something that catches your heart — there are bound to exist times when you lot desire to motility up shut and personal.

Thankfully, Chrome lets you lot take back control. Head into the app’s settings, open the Accessibility section, and find the selection labeled “Force enable zoom.”

Activate the checkbox alongside it and get ready to zoom to your centre’s content — whether the website you’re looking at wants you to or non.

18. Make the web easier to read

Let’s face it: Some websites don’t exactly make reading pleasant. Whether information technology’s an annoying layout or a font that hurts your cerebrum, we’ve all come across a page that could be a picayune easier on the eyes. (Uh, no need to proper name whatsoever specifics, OK?)

Google has a solution: Chrome’s simplified view mode, which makes any website a bit more than mobile-friendly by simplifying the formatting and stripping out extraneous elements such as ads, navigation bars, and boxes with related content.

Look in that aforementioned Accessibility section of Chrome’s settings and make sure the box adjacent to “Simplified view for web pages” is activated. And so, whenever y’all’re opening an commodity, spotter for a white bar at the bottom of your browser with the words “Show simplified view.” Tap it — and the text will transform correct in front of your tired eyes.

JR Raphael/IDG

Need easier reading even so? Get back to that Accessibility department of Chrome’s settings and play with the “Text scaling” slider at the pinnacle of the folio. It’ll brand all the text you encounter across the web larger, independent of your system-level text size setting.

19. Silence a site in no fourth dimension

Sites that automatically play videos you didn’t ask for are bad plenty (insert awkward eye darting here), only sites that include
audio
in their autoplay videos are absolutely inexcusable.

Y’all’d never know it, only Chrome has a super-fast way to become any site to shut up when it’s barking at you at the wrong time. Simply tap the lilliputian padlock icon adjacent to the site’southward URL in the Chrome Android address bar, and yous’ll see a secret on-need control panel for adjusting all sorts of useful site-specific settings.

JR Raphael/IDG

If the site is making sound, the “Sound allowed” permission will be there and waiting. And all you’ll have to exercise is tap it to reveal a toggle that’ll let you muffle that misbehaving web-kitten once and for all without having to dig deep into any out-of-the-way menus.

xx. Refresh with a movie

Demand to reload a page? Swipe downward from anywhere in the primary browser area. (You’ll demand to be scrolled all the way to the summit of the page in order for it to work.) Once you lot see a circumvolve with an pointer appear, you tin can let become, sit back, and say: “Ahh. Isn’t that refreshing?”

21. Slide your way through Chrome’s commands

Excessive borer is for amateurs. Instead of tapping Chrome’s menu icon, lifting your finger, and and then tapping the item y’all want (pshaw!), slide downward on the button to move right into the menu without ever lifting your precious manus. Only proceed swiping down until yous reach your desired option, then let become — and Chrome will select it for you.

22. Choice up where y’all left off

One of Chrome’s almost powerful features is something you might not even know exists: The browser always keeps all of your tabs synced and available across devices — which ways you can open up up Chrome on your Android device and become to the aforementioned tabs you left open up on your laptop or desktop computer.

All you lot’ve gotta exercise to take advantage of it is open up upward Chrome’s main card and select “Recent tabs.” At that place, y’all’ll detect a full list of tabs currently or recently open in Chrome on any devices where y’all’re signed in. Just tap the tab you want, or press and hold on a device’southward name to find an option to open all of its listed tabs at once.

23. Find that site you surfed to before

Maybe it’s not a recently open tab y’all need just ane you had open a while ago — say, a page y’all were viewing from your laptop terminal night, earlier you shut it down and put on your favorite pink footie pajamas.

Well, no problemo: Tiptoe your way back to Chrome’s main menu, and this time, select the line labeled “History.”

Here’s the clandestine most that section: It shows every page yous’ve had opened in Chrome while signed in on any device — including desktop and laptop computers along with any other phones or tablets — all in a single searchable list. Y’all tin can browse through the pages chronologically or look for specific keywords using the box at the meridian of the screen.

This might besides be a good fourth dimension to remind yourself about the existence of Chrome’due south Incognito style for the type of web surfing you don’t desire kept on tape. And don’t forget, too: You can always articulate your full browsing history from Chrome on any device, should the need always arise. (Don’t worry: I won’t enquire for details.)

24. Brand a site particularly like shooting fish in a barrel to access

For any site you visit routinely, make your life a niggling easier by placing a one-tap shortcut directly to it on your device’s home screen. Only await in Chrome’s card for the “Add together to abode screen” option. That’ll put the electric current site’s icon right where you’ll always see information technology for fast time to come access.

With some sites, you lot might see an “Install app” option instead. That indicates the site is available every bit a progressive web app, and installing information technology will give you an fifty-fifty more robust app-like experience — sometimes with the benefit of born offline admission.

JR Raphael/IDG

25. Speed upwards your browsing and utilise less data

These tips all revolve effectually the notion of saving time — so how virtually one that quite literally makes web pages load faster while likewise helping you use less data?

Chrome’southward Lite Mode is a powerful all the same out-of-sight system for doing exactly that: When activated, the feature routes pages through Google’s servers — in a split 2d — earlier they reach your device. The pages are and then compressed and sent to you in a sized-downward form, though you probably won’t notice whatever difference from a visual perspective.

You tin try information technology out by opening the Lite Mode department of Chrome’s settings. Once the feature’s been running for a while, visiting that same department will show you a detailed breakdown of exactly how much data you’ve saved over fourth dimension.

26. Swim into a wilder aqueduct

You may know that Chrome offers different release channels for its desktop browser — just did yous know you can also opt to be more than adventurous with Chrome on your Android device?

If y’all like trying out new features before they’re released, catch Google’south Chrome Beta app. It gets new elements and interface changes before they’re gear up for prime time (which, off-white alert, ways they might occasionally be a bit unpolished).

If you want to go a pace farther, attempt out the Chrome Dev app. It’s described as the “bleeding edge” version of Chrome, with experimental elements that are guaranteed to be “rough around the edges.” (Careful with those fingers!)

And if you’re actually feeling bold, give the Chrome Canary app a whirl. It’due south the near unstable and frequently updated channel of Chrome, with features and then fresh they’re bound to be partially uncooked on occasion.

The best part? All of the Chrome Android channels exist equally divide standalone apps. That means you can install whatever or all of them and run them correct alongside the regular Chrome app, with no major commitment and no real risk involved.

And that, my friends, is what nosotros call livin’ on the border — in the most gentle and run a risk-free way imaginable.

For fifty-fifty more time-saving magic, come check out my free Android Shortcut Supercourse to uncover advanced options for zooming around your device, typing out text faster than ever, and all sorts of other buried treasures.

This article was originally published in June 2022 and updated in December 2021.