What's new Chrome Beta 69: support for notches and player for Android Go

Google Chrome

La Chrome beta for Android it has been updated with interesting news. These include support for screen notches and using the browser as a media player in Android Go.

Websites will adapt better to notches

The notches They have come to stay because of the iPhone X submitted almost a year ago. Looking ahead to next September, all Apple phones will choose to include the notch, so at least during 2019 we will continue to have these notches on the screen on a wide range of devices. With this in mind, notches are a reality to adapt to. Apple made this easy for websites at Safari offering presets with a safe zone, and now it's Chrome's turn.

In general terms, the idea is the same: under some previous guidelines, websites will know where they can show content and where they can't, letting the notch area not cover content and managing it better in case the user decides to use the full screen. If a website has already been adapted to Safari, it should work the same in Chrome, so the experience will be homogeneous between devices. This option is activated with the flag # enable-display-cutout-api.

Chrome will work as a media player on Android Go

En Android GoEvery MB of storage and free RAM is crucial for optimal device performance. Since there is no Chrome Go, but it will still come pre-installed, from Google they have decided to use it as a media player in this version of the operating system. You can choose the browser as an application to open, for example, a video, and use the typical Chrome controls.

Chrome as a player on Android Go

New download manager

The archives page and download manager can be modified now using the flag # download-home-v2. You can see the new aspect in the following image, which highlights the tabbed categorization of pages and files; as well as a new division by file type to quickly find what you are looking for. The information button is replaced by one of Settings.

New Chrome Download Manager

Download Chrome Beta from the Play Store

Download Chrome Beta from APK Mirror

Bonus: Drive suggestions in the search bar

Finally, and although it is not yet part of the beta wing, in the future Chrome will suggest files Drive in the search bar, as long as Google is your default search engine.