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 88 is beta as of December 3, 2020.
Chrome now supports an API for querying and managing digital products to facilitate in-app purchases from web applications. This is used with the Payment Request API, which is used to make the actual purchases. The API would be linked to a digital distribution service connected via the user agent. In Chromium, this is specifically a web API wrapper around the Android Play Billing API.
This is needed so that web apps in the Play Store can 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.
In Chrome 88, this is available for Android in an origin trial. For a list of other origin trials starting in this release, see below.
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 Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials themselves, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers.
Allows sites to query for estimates of the environmental lighting conditions within WebXR sessions. This exposes both spherical harmonics representing the ambient lighting, as well as a cubemap texture representing "reflections". Adding lighting estimation can help to make models feel more natural and like they "fit" better with the user's environment. This can make them feel more "real" or "natural".
In Chrome 88, this is available for Android only.
The following features, previously in Chrome origin trials, are now enabled by default.
Adds the performance.measureMemory() method that estimates the memory usage of the web page in case the page is currently isolated (e.g. on Desktop). Because the method is gated behind COOP/COEP web sites need to enabled crossOriginIsolated to use this method. For more information, see Monitor your web page's total memory usage with measureMemory().
Adds the ability to request unadjusted/unaccelerated mouse movement data when in PointerLock. If unadjustedMovement is set to true, then the pointer movements will not be affected by the underlying platform modifications such as mouse acceleration. For more information, see Disable mouse acceleration to provide a better FPS gaming experience.
PointerLock
unadjustedMovement
To mitigate "tab-napping" attacks, in which a new tab/window opened by a victim context may navigate that opener context, anchors that target _blank will behave as though rel is set to noopener. To opt out of this behavior, you can set rel to opener. This conforms to a change in the HTML standard.
_blank
rel
noopener
Dark mode is an accessibility feature that allows web authors to enable their web pages to be viewed in dark mode. When enabled, users are able to view dark mode supported websites by toggling the dark mode settings on their OS. The benefits of dark mode are being easier on the eyes in a low light environment and lower battery consumption. For more about dark mode and form controls, see Improved dark mode default styling with the color-scheme CSS property and the corresponding meta tag.
Adds the AbortSignal option, named signal, to the options parameter of addEventListener(). The signal option must first be created by an AbortController by accessing the signal property on an AbortController instance. Once the signal is passed in to addEventListener(), calling AbortController.abort() removes the event listener added with addEventListener().
AbortSignal
signal
addEventListener()
AbortController
AbortController.abort()
Allows explicitly specifying an aspect ratio for any element to get similar behavior to a replaced element. This generalizes the aspect ratio concept to general elements. It allows various effects, examples include sizing <iframe> elements using an aspect ratio, filmstrips where each element has the same height but needs an appropriate width, and cases where a replaced element is wrapped by a component but should keep the aspect ratio.
<iframe>
Allows complex selectors inside the :not() pseudo class, such as :not(.a + .b .c).
:not()
:not(.a + .b .c)
When adopting a shadow root into a <template> document from a document that the <template> is in (or vice versa), Chrome will no longer clear its adoptedStyleSheets. Currently Chrome always clears adoptedStyleSheets when the shadow root containing it is adopted into a different document. This ensures that constructed stylesheets are not used across <iframe> elements, but this also covers adopting into/from <template> elements, causing some confusion for the web developer.
<template>
adoptedStyleSheets
A new attribute on ElementInternals, shadowRoot, allows custom elements to access their own shadow root, regardless of open/closed status. Additionally, further restrictions are added to the attachInternals() method to ensure that custom elements get the first chance to attach the ElementInternals interface. With this change, the attachInternals() method will throw an exception if called before the custom element constructor being run.
ElementInternals
shadowRoot
attachInternals()
This feature was mostly driven, at least initially, by the declarative Shadow DOM feature introduction. With declarative Shadow DOM, there was a problem with closed shadow roots: declarative shadow content loads before the custom element is upgraded, which means that closed shadow content would have been inaccessible. In addition to the declarative Shadow DOM use case, this feature also offers a convenience to custom element authors, who no longer need to keep a reference to attached shadow roots, and can instead use the ElementInternals interface.
The type parameter in WakeLock.request() is now optional and defaults to "screen", which is currently the only allowed value. For more information, see Stay awake with the Screen Wake Lock API.
type
WakeLock.request()
"screen"
Origin isolation allows developers to opt in to giving up certain cross-origin same-site access capabilities—namely synchronous scripting via document.domain, and calling postMessage() with WebAssembly.Module instances. This gives the browser more flexibility in implementation technologies. Reasons why a site may want better isolation include: performance isolation, allocations of large amounts of memory, side-channel protection (e.g. against Spectre), and improved memory measurement.
document.domain
postMessage()
WebAssembly.Module
Adds support for path() as a value for the CSS clip-path property, which allows specifying SVG-style paths for clipping. This supplements the four basic shapes currently supported by clip-path: circle, ellipse, polygon, and url. For example, the following would clip an element with a triangle: clip-path: path(oddeven, 'M 5 5 h 100 v 100 Z')
path()
clip-path
circle
ellipse
polygon
url
clip-path: path(oddeven, 'M 5 5 h 100 v 100 Z')
The Permissions-Policy HTTP header replaces the existing Feature-Policy header for controlling delegation of permissions and powerful features. The header uses a structured syntax, and allows sites to more tightly restrict which origins can be granted access to features.
Permissions-Policy
Feature-Policy
Transceivers allow the sending and/or receiving of media in WebRTC. Stopping a transceiver makes it permanently inactive and frees its network port, encoder, and decoder resources. This also makes its m= section in the SDP reusable by future transceivers, preventing the SDP from growing indefinitely as transceivers are added and removed. This is part of "Perfect Negotiation", which makes signaling in WebRTC race free and less error-prone.
m=
This version of Chrome incorporates version 8.8 of the V8 JavaScript engine. It specifically includes the change listed below. You can find a complete list of recent features in the V8 release notes.
Adds the JavaScript type SharedArrayBuffer gated behind COOP/COEP. A SharedArrayBuffer allows a message to be posted to a worker by sending a reference instead of a copy of the sent data.JavaScript Atomics provides atomic loads and stores and read/modify/write accesses to SharedArrayBuffer objects. Atomics.wait() provides the ability for a worker to wait for another worker to signal it, without having to spinlock.
SharedArrayBuffer
Atomics.wait()
The primary use case for SharedArrayBuffer is for asm.js code, but it is also useful for implementing other higher-level sharing between Workers.
For more information, see Making your website "cross-origin isolated" using COOP and COEP.
This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of current deprecations and previous removals.
Since Chrome 80, pages have no longer been able to open a new page during unloading using window.open(). Since then enterprises have been able to use the AllowPopupsDuringPageUnload policy flag to allow popups during page unload. Starting in Chrome 88, this flag is no longer supported.
window.open()
Chrome is removing support for FTP URLs. The legacy FTP implementation in Chrome has no support for encrypted connections (FTPS), nor proxies. Usage of FTP in the browser is sufficiently low that it is no longer viable to invest in improving the existing FTP client. In addition, more capable FTP clients are available on all affected platforms.
Google Chrome 72 and later removed support for fetching document subresources over FTP and rendering of top level FTP resources. Navigating to FTP URLs results in showing a directory listing or a download depending on the type of resource. A bug in Google Chrome 74 and later resulted in dropping support for accessing FTP URLs over HTTP proxies. Proxy support for FTP was removed entirely in Google Chrome 76.
The remaining capabilities of Google Chrome's FTP implementation were restricted to either displaying a directory listing or downloading a resource over unencrypted connections.
In Chrome 77, FTP support was disabled by default for fifty percent of users but was available with flags.
In Chrome 88 all FTP support is disabled.
Web Components v0 have been in a reverse origin trial since Chrome 80. This allowed users of the API time to upgrade their sites while ensuring that new adopters of Web Components used version 1. The reverse origin trial ends with Chrome 87, making Chrome 88 the first in which version 0 is no longer supported. The Web Components v1 APIs replace Web Components v0 and are fully supported in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge. This removal covers the items listed below.
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 87 is beta as of October 15, 2020.
Testing web authentication has long been difficult because developers need devices to test their code. Starting in Chrome 87, authentication can be emulated and debugged using a new panel in DevTools. You can find the panel in DevTools by selecting More options, then More tools, then WebAuthn. To learn how to use it, see the section in What's New in DevTools (Chrome 87).
Room-scale video conferencing solutions deploy cameras with pan, tilt, and zoom capabilities so that software can point the camera at meeting participants. Starting in Chrome 87, the pan, tilt, and zoom features on cameras are accessible to websites using media track constraints in MediaDevices.getUserMedia() and MediaStreamTrack.applyConstraints().
MediaDevices.getUserMedia()
MediaStreamTrack.applyConstraints()
Websites are only allowed to control these capabilities when users explicitly grant permission. For details on using the new capabilities and a demo, see Control camera pan, tilt, and zoom.
The trend in CSS for many years has been to supplement physical properties with logical properties. Properties that assume language flows left to right and top to bottom don't work in non-European text such as vertical Chinese text, or Arabic. Modern CSS rules use flow-relative terms like start and end and provide rules for dealing with the text's axis (direction).
The first step in implementing this in Chrome was to implement the most granular flow-relative features of the CSS Logical Properties and Values spec. Chrome 87 ships shorthands and offsets to make these logical properties and values a bit easier to write. What was once written with multiple CSS rules can now be written as one. For example, separate rules for margin-block-start and margin-block-end may now be written using a single margin-block property.
margin-block-start
margin-block-end
margin-block
For a list of all flow-relative shorthands now supported by Chrome, and explanations for how to use them, see Logical layout enhancements with flow-relative shorthands. For more CSS-related updates, see the CSS section, below.
Origin trials allow you to try new features and give feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community. The following feature, previously in a Chrome origin trial, is now enabled by default.
The Cookie Store API exposes HTTP cookies to service workers and offers an asynchronous alternative to document.cookie.
document.cookie
Chrome 87 has a number of changes related to cross-origin isolation. Chrome will now use origin instead of site as agent cluster key for cross-origin isolated agent clusters. Mutation of document.domain is no longer supported for cross-origin isolated agent clusters. This change also introduces window.crossOriginIsolated, a boolean that indicates whether APIs that require cross-origin isolation are allowed to use it. Supporting APIs include:
window.crossOriginIsolated
performance.measureMemory()
Adds the disallowdocumentaccess property to disallow cross-document scripting between iframes from the same origin in the same parent document. This also puts same-origin iframes in separate event loops.
disallowdocumentaccess
Note: This item was pulled from Chrome 87 beta and was not in later builds.
Sometimes long-running scripts block user input. A lag between a user's action and a response by an app is a bad user experience. To address this, Chrome has added a method called isInputPending(), accessible from navigator.scheduling, which can be called from long-running operations. You can find an example of the method's use in the draft spec.
isInputPending()
navigator.scheduling
HTTP range requests, which have been available in major browsers for several years, allow servers to send requested data to the client in chunks. This has proved especially useful for large media files where the user experience is improved through smoother playback and improved pause and resume functions.
Historically, range requests and services workers did not work well together, forcing developers to build work-arounds. Starting in Chrome 87, passing range requests through to the network from inside a service worker will "just work."
For an explanation of the issues with range requests and what's changed in Chrome 87, see Handling range requests in a service worker.
Transferable streams now allows ReadableStream, WritableStream, and TransformStream objects to be passed as arguments to postMessage(). The streams APIs provide ubiquitous, interoperable primitives for creating, composing, and consuming streams of data. A natural thing to do with a stream is to pass it to a web worker. This provides a fluent primitive for offloading work to another thread.
ReadableStream
WritableStream
TransformStream
Offloading work onto a worker is important for a smooth user experience, but the ergonomics can be awkward. Transferable streams solve this problem for streams. Once the stream itself has been transferred, the data is transparently cloned in the background.
The ontransitionrun, ontransitionstart, and ontransitioncancel event handler attributes allow developers to add event listeners for 'transitionrun', 'transitionstart', and 'transitioncancel' events on elements, Document objects, and Window objects.
ontransitionrun
ontransitionstart
ontransitioncancel
'transitionrun'
'transitionstart'
'transitioncancel'
The WakeLockSentinel object has a new property called released that indicates whether a sentinel has already been released. It defaults to false and changes to true when a release event is dispatched. The new attribute helps web developers know when locks are released so that they do not need to keep track of them manually.
WakeLockSentinel
released
New @font-face descriptors have been added to ascent-override, descent-override, and line-gap-override to override metrics of the font. This Improves interoperably across browsers and operating systems, so that the same font always looks the same on the same site, regardless of OS or browser. Additionally, it aligns metrics between two web fonts present simultaneously, but for different glyphs. Finally, it overrides font metrics for a fallback font to emulate a web font, to minimize cumulative layout shift.
@font-face
ascent-override
descent-override
line-gap-override
Chrome now supports several new text decoration and underline properties. These properties solve use cases where underlines are too close to the text baseline and ink-skipping triggers too early in a text run. These use cases solve problems caused by the launch of the text-decoration-skip-ink property. The new properties are text-decoration-thickness, text-underline-offset and a from-font keyword for text-underline-position.
text-decoration-skip-ink
text-decoration-thickness
text-underline-offset
from-font
text-underline-position
CSS2 allowed browsers to define the default value for the quotes property, which Chrome formerly followed. Chrome 87 now follows CSS Generated Content Module Level 3 in which the 'auto' keyword is the default value. That spec requires that a typographically appropriate value be used for quotes based on the content language of the element and/or its parent.
'auto'
This version of Chrome incorporates version 8.7 of the V8 JavaScript engine. It specifically includes the changes listed below. You can find a complete list of recent features in the V8 release notes.
Chrome now supports Atomics.waitAsync(), the async version of Atomics.wait(). Atomics.waitAsync() allows programmers to wait on a SharedArrayBuffer location in the same fashion as Atomics.wait() but returns a Promise instead.
Atomics.waitAsync()
Atomics.wait() blocks the thread and cannot be used on the main web browser thread, where blocking is disallowed. This makes coordination via SharedArrayBuffers between the main thread and worker threads more ergonomic.
SharedArrayBuffers
Permissions policy declarations in an <iframe> tag can no longer use commas as a separator between items. Developers should use semicolons instead.
Blink will no longer support the rarely-used -webkit-font-size-delta property. Developers should use font-size to control font size instead.
-webkit-font-size-delta
font-size
Chrome is deprecating and removing support for FTP URLs. The current FTP implementation in Google Chrome has no support for encrypted connections (FTPS), nor proxies. Usage of FTP in the browser is sufficiently low that it is no longer viable to invest in improving the existing FTP client. In addition, more capable FTP clients are available on all affected platforms. Google Chrome 72 and later removed support for fetching document subresources over FTP and rendering of top level FTP resources. Currently navigating to FTP URLs results in showing a directory listing or a download depending on the type of resource. A bug in Google Chrome 74 and later resulted in dropping support for accessing FTP URLs over HTTP proxies. Proxy support for FTP was removed entirely in Google Chrome 76. In Chrome 86, FTP was turned off for pre-release channels (Canary and Beta) and was experimentally turned off for one percent of stable users. The remaining capabilities of Google Chrome's FTP implementation are restricted to either displaying a directory listing or downloading a resource over unencrypted connections.
Remainder of the deprecation follows this timeline:
FTP support will be disabled by default for fifty percent of users but can be enabled using the flags listed above.
FTP support will be disabled.
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 86 is beta as of September 3, 2020.
For users who rely on a keyboard or similar assistive technology to navigate the web, the focus indicator is a crucial visual affordance. To improve both the user and developer experience of working with focus, Chrome 86 is introducing two features.
The first is a CSS selector, :focus-visible, which lets a developer opt-in to the same heuristic the browser uses when it's deciding whether to display a default focus indicator.
The second is a user setting called Quick Focus Highlight. When enabled, this setting causes an additional focus indicator to appear over the active element. Importantly, this indicator will be visible even if the page has disabled focus styles with CSS and it causes any :focus or :focus-visible styles to always be displayed. For details, see Giving users and developers more control over focus.
Note: The origin trial for this feature was originally announced as starting in Chrome 85. That timeline changed.
There is a long tail of human interface devices (HIDs) that are too new, too old, or too uncommon to be accessible by systems' device drivers. The WebHID API solves this by providing a way to implement device-specific logic in JavaScript.
An HID is one that takes input from or provides output to humans. Examples of devices include keyboards, pointing devices (mice, touchscreens, etc.), and gamepads.
The inability to access uncommon or unusual HID devices is particularly painful when it comes to gamepad support. Gamepad inputs and outputs are not well standardized and web browsers often require custom logic for specific devices. This is unsustainable and results in poor support for the long tail of older and uncommon devices.
We're working on an article to show you how to use the new API. In the meantime, we've found some demos from a few eager engineers that you can use to try the new API. To see those demos, check out Human interface devices on the web: a few quick examples. The Origin Trials section has information on signing up and a list of other origin trials starting in this release. This origin trial is expected to run through Chrome 87 in January 2021.
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 Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials themselves, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers.
Adds new screen information APIs and makes incremental improvements to existing window placement APIs, allowing web applications to offer compelling multi-screen experiences.
The existing window.screen property offers a limited view of available screen space, while window placement functions are generally restricted to the current screen. This feature unlocks modern multi-screen capabilities for web applications.
Adds a meta tag allowing a site to recommend measures for the user agent to apply in order to save battery life and optimize CPU usage. Websites that are known to have high CPU or battery costs may want to request that the UA optimize for CPU or battery, even if the user has not requested it. Most modern operating systems also have battery saving features that activate either when the battery is low or the user wishes to save battery. Ideally web sites should be able to respect these settings. Sites may wish to advise the user agent on which strategies work best for the site in these situations.
Secure payment confirmation augments the payment authentication experience on the web with the help of the Web Authentication API. The feature adds a new PaymentCredential credential type to the Credential Management API, which allows a relying party such as a bank to create a PublicKeyCredential that can be queried by any merchant origin as part of an online checkout via the Payment Request API using the proposed secure-payment-confirmation payment method.
This feature enables a consistent, low friction, strong authentication experience using platform authenticators. Strong authentication with the user's bank is becoming a requirement for online payments in many regions, including the European Union. The new feature provides a better user experience and stronger security than existing solutions.
Adds a reporting API to help developers deploy cross-origin opener policy (COOP) on their websites. In addition to reporting breakages when COOP is enforced, it proves a report-only mode that reports potential breakages that would have happened had COOP been enforced. To register for the origin trial, follow the link above. For more information, see Making your website "cross-origin isolated" using COOP and COEP.
The following features, previously in a Chrome origin trial, are now enabled by default.
The new Native File System API enables developers to build powerful web apps that interact with files on the user's local device such as IDEs, photo and video editors, text editors, and more. After a user grants access, this API allows web apps to read or save changes directly to files and folders on the user's device. It does all this by invoking the platform's own open and save dialog boxes. The image below shows a web page invoked using the open dialog box on Mac.
To learn more, see sample code, and a text editor demonstration app, see The Native File System API: Simplifying access to local files for details.
Note: The API surface is changed considerably from what was available in the origin trial. Differences are explained in detail in the spec repo. In the coming weeks, watch the web.dev article listed above for a full explanation of how to use the production version of the API.
Adds Altitude and Azimuth angles to PointerEvents. Adds tiltX and tiltY to altitude and azimuth transformation and altitude and azimuth to tiltX and tiltY transformation depending on which pair is available from the device. These angles are those commonly measured by devices. Altitude and azimuth can be calculated using trigonometry from tiltX, tiltY. From a hardware perspective it is easier and less expensive to measure tiltX and tiltY.
From a stylus app perspective altitude and azimuth makes more sense and is more intuitive for users. Using tiltX and tiltY requires a developer to visualize the intersection angle between two imaginary planes, while azimuth and altitude are easier to visualize just by looking at the pen and the screen surface.
Adding azimuth and altitude makes the API more intuitive. Providing conversion between tiltX and tiltY and altitude and azimuth and vice versa allows for backwards compatibility with apps using tiltX and tiltY (even if newer devices might only return altitude and azimuth).
Websites can set a well-known URL for changing passwords (for example, /.well-known/change-password). This URL's purpose is to redirect users to the change password page in order for them to modify their passwords quickly. Chrome leverages this URL to help users change their passwords when it detects a saved, compromised password. For more information, see Help users change passwords easily by adding a well-known URL for changing passwords.
The navigator.registerProtocolHandler() handler now replaces spaces with "%20" instead of "+". This makes Chrome consistent with other browsers such as Firefox.
Adds a pseudo-element for customizing numbers and bullets for <ul> and <ol> elements. This change lets developers control the color, size, bullet shape, and number type.
Document Policy restricts the surface area of the web platform on a per-document basis, similar to iframe sandboxing, but more flexibly. It can do things like:
Additionally, the header allows sites to opt out of fragment and text-fragment scrolling on load as a privacy mitigation for the scroll-to-text-fragment feature. This is the first part of the Document Policy API to ship.
Adds a new MediaKeySessionType named "persistent-usage-record session", for which the license and keys are not persisted and for which a record of key usage is persisted when the keys available within the session are destroyed. This feature may help content providers understand how decryption keys are used for purposes like fraud detection.
A FetchEvent dispatched to a service worker is in a loading pipeline, which is performance sensitive. The new FetchEvent.handled property returns a promise that resolves when a response is returned from a service worker to its client. This enables a service worker to delay tasks that can only run after responses are complete.
Adds a property to determine whether the pitch of an audio or video element should be preserved when adjusting the playback rate. This feature is wanted for creative purposes (for example, pitch-shifting in "DJ deck" style applications). It also prevents the introduction of artifacts from pitch-preserving algorithms at playback speeds very close to 1.00. It is already supported by Safari and Firefox.
Web developers can now explicitly set the assigned nodes for a slot element. This solves two problems with Shadow DOM v1:
For information on how the new API solves these issues, see the Imperative Shadow DOM Distribution API explainer.
The window.location.fragmentDirective property has been moved to document.fragmentDirective. This is a change to the text fragments feature.
The <fieldset> element now supports 'inline-grid', 'grid', 'inline-flex', and 'flex' keywords for the CSS 'display' property.
Adds a method to replace all children of the ParentNode with the passed-in nodes. Previously, there are a couple different ways to replace a node's children with a new set of nodes including:
Chrome has extended the list of URL schemes that can be overridden via registerProtocolHandler() to include cabal, dat, did, dweb, ethereum, hyper, ipfs, ipns, and ssb. Extending the list to include decentralized web protocols allows resolution of links to generic entities independently of the website or gateway that's providing access to it. For more information, see Programmable Custom Protocol Handlers at are we distributed yet?
The Asynchronous Clipboard API currently does not support the text/html format. Chrome 86 adds support for copying and pasting HTML from the clipboard. The HTML is sanitized when it is read and written to the clipboard. The purpose of this change is to allow use cases such as:
This is also intended to help the replacement of document.execCommand() for copy and paste functionality.
The VP9 video codec is now available on macOS Big Sur whenever it's supported in the underlying hardware. If developers use the Media Capabilities API to detect playback smoothness and power efficiency, the logic in their player should automatically start preferring VP9 at higher resolutions without any action on their part. To take full advantage of this feature, developers should encode their VP9 files in multiple resolutions to accommodate varying user bandwidths and connections.
Enables the insertion of user-defined processing steps in the encoding and decoding of a WebRTC MediaStreamTrack. This allows applications to insert custom data processing. An important use case this supports is end-to-end encryption of the encoded data transferred between RTCPeerConnections via an intermediate server.
Web Components v0 was removed from desktop and Android in Chrome 80. Chromium 86 removes them from WebView. This removal includes Custom Elements v0, Shadow DOM v0, and HTML Imports.
Chrome is deprecating and removing support for FTP URLs. The current FTP implementation in Google Chrome has no support for encrypted connections (FTPS), or proxies. Usage of FTP in the browser is sufficiently low that it is no longer viable to invest in improving the existing FTP client. In addition, more capable FTP clients are available on all affected platforms.
Chrome 72 and later removed support for fetching document subresources over FTP and rendering of top level FTP resources. Currently navigating to FTP URLs results in showing a directory listing or a download depending on the type of resource. A bug in Google Chrome 74 and later resulted in dropping support for accessing FTP URLs over HTTP proxies. Proxy support for FTP was removed entirely in Google Chrome 76.
The remaining capabilities of Google Chrome's FTP implementation are restricted to either displaying a directory listing or downloading a resource over unencrypted connections.
Deprecation of support will follow this timeline:
FTP is still enabled by default for most users, but turned off for pre-release channels (Canary and Beta) and will be experimentally turned off for one percent of stable users. In this version you can re-enable it from the command line using either the --enable-ftp command line flag or the --enable-features=FtpProtocol flag.
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 85 is beta as of July 23, 2020.
Fetch upload streaming lets web developers make a fetch with a ReadableStream body. Starting in Chrome 85, it's available for an origin trial.
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.
See the Origin Trials section for information on signing up and for a list of other origin trials starting in this release. This origin trial is expected to run through Chrome 87 in January 2021.
Note: At the time this was originally published, WebHID was scheduled to begin an origin trial in Chrome 85. The timeline has since been pushed back to Chrome 86.
We're working on an article to show you how to use the new API. In the meantime, we've found some demos from a few eager engineers that you can use to try the new API. To see those demos, check out Human interface devices on the web: a few quick examples.
The navigator.getInstalledRelatedApps() method determines whether a site's corresponding native app is installed. This allows customization of a user experience for already-installed apps. For example, users can be redirected from a product marketing page directly into an app. Functionality can be centralized to prevent users from seeing duplicate notifications and save developers from maintaining two code bases. Sites can even avoid prompting for installation of a PWA if a native app is already on a user's device.
It does all this while protecting user privacy. Entries in the web app manifest and the Android manifest file ensure that sites cannot use the API to request arbitrary information about users' installed apps.
This method was implemented on Android in Chrome 80. Starting in Chrome 85, it's available on Microsoft Windows. This addition is the result of work from Microsoft. For details on using this method, see Is your app installed? getInstalledRelatedApps() will tell you!.
CSS Houdini is a set of APIs and CSS features that exposes the CSS rendering engine. It lets developers create new CSS features without waiting for a native implementation in browsers. CSS Houdini's @property rule is part of the CSS Properties and Values API, which allows defining custom properties with inheritance, type checking, and default values. The first part of this API, CSS.registerProperty(), was implemented in Chrome 78. That method's capabilities are now available in stylesheets through the @property.
Take the image below, for example. What you're seeing is a transition created with a CSS custom property. In addition to being impossible without the new API, this transition is also type safe. For more information, see @property: giving superpowers to CSS variables.
In addition to those listed above, this version of Chrome introduces the new 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 Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials themselves, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers.
A declarative API to allow the creation of shadow roots using only HTML and no JavaScript. This API allows Web Components that use Shadow DOM to also make use of server-side rendering (SSR), to get rendered content on screen quickly without requiring JavaScript for shadow root attachment. The origin trial is expected to run through Chrome 87 in January 2020.
The RTCRtpEncodingParameters.adaptivePtime property lets a sender in a real-time communication (RTC) system enable or disable adaptive packet rates. Because the packet rate is a big determining factor to the overall bitrate of an audio stream, an optimal congestion control is needed to adapt the packet rate. The audio packet rate is analogous to the video frame rate, which also plays an important role in the video bitrate adaptation. Although adaptive packet rate may be ubiquitously beneficial, we need this API for applications to enable and disable it, since, otherwise, it may introduce interoperability problems. Some implementations have taken a fixed packet rate as an assumption, and thus may fail or perform sub-optimally with an adaptive packet rate. The origin trial is expected to run through Chrome 87 in January 2021.
Portals enable seamless navigations between sites or pages by allowing a page to show another page as an inset. For more information, see Hands-on with Portals: seamless navigation on the Web. The origin trial is expected to run through Chrome 86 in early November.
App shortcuts are now available on desktop in addition to Android, which debuted in Chrome 84. This feature improves users' productivity and facilitates reengagement with key tasks by providing quick access to common actions. For sites that are already Progressive Web Apps, creating shortcuts requires only adding items to the web app manifest. This addition is the result of work from Microsoft. For more information, see Get things done quickly with app shortcuts.
Chrome is now auto-upgrading images served over HTTP from HTTPS sites by rewriting URLs to HTTPS without falling back to HTTP when secure content is not available. Chrome has been auto-upgrading audio and video content since version 80.
Adds support for decoding AVIF content natively using existing AV1 decoders. AVIF is a next generation image format standardized by the Alliance for Open Media. There are three primary motivations for supporting AVIF:
Getting persistent storage is easier and more predictable for installed web apps, including PWAs and Trusted Web Activities. If an installed web app requests persistent storage by calling navigator.storage.persist(), it will be granted automatically. Other sites will continue to use the existing heuristics.
navigator.storage.persist()
Chrome made two changes to match those made in the CSS Color Adjustment level 1 spec.
This means content which has a dark theme in its CSS will be able to match it with dark themed UA controls. This change improves interoperability with WebKit which already had this behavior for 'color-scheme: dark'.
Adds a CSS property called content-visibility, which allows automatic or script management of content visibility. When hidden, the element's contents (subtree or replaced element contents) are not drawn or hit-tested and have CSS containment applied, allowing for rendering optimizations. The 'auto' keyword allows for the user-agent to manage content visibility based on proximity to the viewport, whereas the 'hidden' keyword allows full script control of content visibility.
CSS counter-set is an additional property introduced in CSS Lists Module Level 3 to control counters by setting an existing counter to a specified value. This builds on other implemented counter control properties, specifically counter-reset (which creates a new counter with a specified value) and counter-increment (which increments an existing counter by a specified amount). This feature is needed for precise counter control, since otherwise it is not possible to set an existing counter to a value other than figuring out how to increment or decrement it.
The Event Timing API enables web developers to measure event latency both before and after the page load. Monitoring event latency requires an event listener. This precludes measuring event latency early in page load, and adds unnecessary performance overhead.
(Desktop only) The leavepictureinpicture event now exposes a reference to pictureInPictureWindow so that web developers no longer need to keep a global reference to that object.
Support is added for several CSS properties and descriptors for printing.
Web developers may specify a referrer policy on their documents, which impacts the Referer header sent on outgoing requests and navigations. When no such policy is specified, Chrome will now use strict-origin-when-cross-origin as the default policy, instead of no-referrer-when-downgrade. On cross-origin requests made from documents without a specified referrer policy, this reduces the Referer header to the initiating origin.
Changes the behavior of fallback content for ImageInputType and HTMLImageElement. Such content will now render exactly the same as alt text would.
Corrects several spec inconsistencies related to the <link> tag's disabled attribute.
These behaviors are eliminated in compliance with a spec update.
Adds two new methods, writeValueWithResponse() and writeValueWithoutResponse(), which resolve several issues with the existing method for writing to GATT characteristics and enable developers to control whether the device returns a response. The existing writeValue() method will remain for backwards compatibility, but its use is discouraged. The following problems with the existing method have been corrected:
The new APIs also do not depend on the GATT characteristic properties being set correctly which allows working around buggy Bluetooth devices.
WebAssembly now imports and exports WebAssembly function parameters of type i64 using BigInt.
Several methods from the Web Authentication Level 2 spec have been added.
This version of Chrome incorporates version 8.1 of the V8 JavaScript engine. It specifically includes the changes listed below. You can find a complete list of recent features in the V8 release notes.
Adds the logical assignment operators ||=, &&=, and ??= to JavaScript. This rounds out the compound assignment operators to also include logical binary operators. Currently only mathematical and bitwise binary operators are supported. This improvement is for shipping terser, clearer JavaScript. For more information, see Logical assignment.
Adds two new JavaScript features to V8. Promise.any() accepts an iterable of promises and returns a promise that is fulfilled by the first given promise to be fulfilled, or rejected with an AggregateError holding the rejection reasons if all of the given promises are rejected. AggregateError is a support class that aggregates one or more errors into a single object. This rounds out standard JS support for commonly available Promise combinators already available in userland libraries.
JavaScript now has support for global substring replacement through the new String.prototype.replaceAll() method.
Chrome 85 starts a spec-mandated turn down of AppCache in Chrome. For details and instructions for managing the transition gracefully, see Preparing for AppCache removal. For information on a feature that will help you identify uses of this and other deprecated APIs, see Know your code health.
Use of cookies with SameSite set to None without the Secure attribute is no longer supported. Any cookie that requests SameSite=None but is not marked Secure will be rejected. This feature started rolling out to users of Stable Chrome on July 14, 2020. See SameSite Updates for a full timeline and details. Cookies delivered over plaintext channels may be cataloged or modified by network attackers. Requiring secure transport for cookies intended for cross-site usage reduces this risk.
contentBoxSize
borderBoxSize
devicePixelContentBoxSize
ResizeObserverSize
ResizeObserver
document.onresize
-webkit-appearance
appearance
ruby-position
over
under
inter-character
sheet.replace("@import('some.css');")
replace()
@import
Element.innerHTML
Content-Security-Policy: require-trusted-types-for 'script'; report-uri //my-csp-endpoint.example
Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy
Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy
Performance.measureMemory()
Scheduler.postTask()
user-blocking
user-visible
background
TaskController
MediaStreamTrack
RTCPeerConnection
<mark>
auto
<image>
<video>
<canvas>
prefers-color-scheme
display
inline-grid
grid
inline-flex
flex
<button>
module
font-display
optional
font-display: optional
IDBDatabase.transaction()
durability
"default"
"strict"
"relaxed"
IDBTransaction.durability
const iDBTransaction = database.transaction( [ "storeName" ], "readwrite", { durability: "relaxed" } );
<input>
time
@supports
@supports selector(::before) { div { background: green }; }
canTrickleIceCandidates
RTCRtpSender.setParameters()
RTCRtpEncodingParameters.maxFramerate
maxFramerate
RTCRtpSendParameters
degradationPreference
"maintain-framerate"
"maintain-resolution"
"balanced"
fractionalSecondDigits
Intl.DateTimeFormat
DateTimeFormat
'allow-downloads'
