Chrome tips

If you still want to use the regular tab switcher, but would prefer something other than the vertical configuration, you can opt for Chrome’s experimental horizontal tab switcher. This will make Chrome’s tab switcher more similar to Android’s app switcher. It is nicer for getting a good look at other pages, and seems better organized.

• Open Chrome.
• Type Chrome://flags into the address bar and press enter.
• Search for “Enable horizontal tab switcher”.
• When the option shows up, tap on the drop-down menu and select Enabled.

Preloading pages is a Chrome feature that will proactively load sites you are likely to click on. This means a page will often be loaded in the background before you decide to go into it. It makes the whole experience much faster using cookies, but it can also waste data you otherwise wouldn’t use. This is not cool if you are on a tight internet budget, but those who don’t mind wasting megabytes will enjoy the added speed.

• Open Chrome.
• Tap on the 3-dot menu button.
• Select Settings.
• Select Privacy.
• Toggle Preload pages for faster browsing and searching on. Also read: How to speed up Chrome for Android

Google Chrome for Android is all about the internet, and therefore, the cloud. Google makes it possible to sync most of your Chrome data across devices. This includes bookmarks, history, passwords, open tabs, credit card info, and more. It will also analyze your usage data to provide better predictions.

• Open Chrome.
• Hit the 3-dot menu button.
• Select Settings.
• Under Account, select Sign in to Chrome.
• Follow instructions to sign in.
• You can now access Sync and Google services to customize options.

Not only will this make your browsing faster, but it will also help cut down data consumption. We all know how expensive data can be. Even if you have an unlimited internet plan, most carriers will throttle you if you get too wild with your data consumption. Why not optimize websites for mobile use and save data? How to turn on Data Saver on Chrome for Android:

• Open Chrome.
• Hit the 3-dot menu button.
• Select Settings.
• Select Data Saver.
• Toggle the setting on.

Found something interesting on the internet and decided to read it later, but not sure if you will have access to the internet? Then you can use this simple trick to save a specific page for offline reading. Once you have opened the web page you want to save, tap on the 3-dot overflow button on the top-right. Tap on Share and then select Print from the sharing menu. On the top of the print screen, you should see “Select a printer” drop-down menu, tap on it and choose to Save as PDF. Voila! You now have the page saved on your device for offline reading. Use apps like Adobe Reader or Google Drive to view the file.

Brotli is a web compression tool that has been integrated into Google Chrome as an experimental feature. The feature is claimed to load pages even faster that you would expect. It compresses the webpages almost by 26% to their original size, hence loading them faster and also consuming less data. While Chrome’s Data Saver is only limited to HTTP-sites, Brotli only works over more secure HTTPS websites. To enable this feature, go to the Chrome address bar and enter chrome://flags. Scroll down and find Brotli Content-Encoding (Or you could also use Find in page feature to search for it). Change it from Default to Enabled. You will be prompted to relaunch Chrome, so tap on RELAUNCH NOW. Once enabled, you can try loading a few websites and know the difference.