Google Chrome celebrates its 15th anniversary with some big updates

Google Chrome is turning 15 and to celebrate the occasion, Google is overhauling Chrome on desktop and adding in brand new features.

The official blog post details how, in the coming weeks, Google will update Chrome’s UI based on Material You design language. According to the post, the redesign will refresh Chrome’s icons to make them more legible as well as create new color palettes that better complement your tabs and toolbar. These changes make it much easier to distinguish between profiles, like your work and personal accounts. Chrome will also be better integrated with your operating system so it can adapt to OS-level changes like dark mode.

Other quality-of-life changes include a more comprehensive menu for faster access to extensions, Google Translate, Password Manager, and more. This redesign had been first announced and pushed down through Google Canary earlier in 2023 and now regular users will finally get to reap the benefits.

The Chrome Web Store is also getting redesigned, with a fresh interface to make finding extensions easier. This includes extension categories – like AI-powered extensions and Editors' spotlight – as well as personalized results. Safety Check is also getting expanded to better identify extensions that have been recently unpublished, are in violation of policies, or are potentially malicious. And thanks to third-party tools, businesses can also risk-access extensions before applying them broadly.

Over the past few months, Chrome has been getting updates to make search much easier and safer, as well as several new features on its mobile version that enhance search capabilities and convenience. And now Google Safe Browsing, which automatically blocks potentially dangerous websites, will be upgraded as well. To combat the speed and sheer numbers of new phishing websites, Safe Browsing will begin checking sites against Google’s known bad site lists in real-time.

:story: TechRadar