In Chrome for Android, as in its namesake for PC, we have the possibility of executing certain settings that reveal parts that would otherwise remain hidden. That’s why today we bring you the 12 hidden settings in Chrome for Android that we have known .
All Chrome’s hidden settings are found within the application code, accessed very easily from the address bar just by typing a specific URL.
The place where we are going to activate these settings is called Chrome’s “flags” , a hidden place that will offer us to enter the app code to manage them to our liking.
To do this we must write the following in the browser’s address bar:
chrome://flags
Once we write this we will enter a hidden menu in Chrome where you can see that we have an immense number of flags, where we can activate or deactivate parameters, clicking on Enabled to activate what we want or Disabled to deactivate it .
We advise that if we do not know what each flag does, we should not touch anything in the configuration , since we can deactivate some crucial function for the proper functioning of the Google browser.
For this reason we are going to tell you some of the best flags to activate in Chrome and get some extra functions for the Google browser.
Dark mode
To force the dark mode in all web pages that we visit with Chrome we must put, in the search bar that we have in the upper right part of the flags, the following and once we find it, activate it (Enable):
Force dark Mode for web contents
Not all pages will look great in dark mode, as some are not ready for it yet.
Speed up video playback
You can improve the loading time of a video within Chrome so that we have to wait less if we activate the following function:
Hardware-accelerated video decode
Smooth scrolling
To activate a smoother scrolling on the screen in the browser, the so-called “scroll” effect , we must search for and activate the following:
Smooth scrolling
Web isolation
In Chrome we can isolate tabs so that the rest of the pages cannot intercept the information. We have to warn you that this process will make Chrome use more memory on the terminal and also consume more battery.
In order to activate the isolation we must look for the following:
Strict site isolation
Disable isolation
If we have activated the web isolation of the previous option, but now we want to deactivate it, we will not be able to do it just by returning to “Strict site isolation” and clicking on “Disabled”.
We must use another flag to be able to disable this function:
Disable site isolation
Offline preview
If you have an Internet connection that is not going too well for you, this function may be interesting for you, since it allows us to view web pages without the need for a connection , as long as they have been previously visited and saved by the browser.
To activate this function we must look for the following:
Offline page previews
Downloads at the same time
We can make Chrome download multiple files at once instead of one at a time to make it faster to download multiple files at the same time.
For that we will activate the following function:
Parallel downloading
Group tabs into groups
If you usually have many tabs open at the same time and you want them to be grouped into groups so that it is easier to identify them, we just have to activate these flags that we put below:
Tab grid layout
Tab groups
Tab groups continuation
Tab groups UI improvements
Floating window
We can use the “PIP” function in Chrome, that is, we can have a floating window where we can continue to watch a video , even if we are no longer right where it is.
You can search and activate it in:
Picture-in-picture web API for Android
To be able to share a text that we copy and paste on different devices is something that we have to do with third-party apps. But if we use Chrome on several of those devices we can share the clipboard without having to install and use any additional app.
For this feature to work properly, we must activate it on all the devices that we want to be synchronized and that also all have Chrome installed.
We must find and activate the following flags:
Enable receiver device to handle the shared clipboard feature
Enable shared clipboard feature signals to be handled
Use Chrome as a file browser
We can make Chrome work as a file explorer and thus be able to see the content of the internal memory of our smartphone in the browser, at the same time that we can view videos and images or play sound all within Chrome.
For this function we will not need any type of flag, it will be enough to write the following in the address bar of Google Chrome itself:
File:///sdcard/
At that time the browser will let us enter all the folders and files that we have on our phone, although it still does not allow us to copy or move items between folders.
Block pop-up windows
We can prevent pop-ups, almost always advertising windows, from loading in Chrome. For that we must block them in settings, as follows:
- We click on the three vertical buttons that are in the upper right part of Chrome.
- Then click on ” Configuration “.
- Then we enter ” Website Configuration “.
- Click on ” Pop-ups and redirects “.
- And now we activate the option ” Pop-ups and redirects “.