Google brings Chrome 88 with new features such as tab search and improved password protection. The browser should be updated for all users soon. This version comes with some interesting new features, and also ends support for a few things.
Chrome 88 abandons support for FTP URLs. Both Mozilla and Google had announced years ago that they would stop supporting the unencrypted file transfer protocol, and would start doing so in the summer of 2020, but until now it has not been completely disabled in Chrome.
Google launched Chrome 88
Another feature that runs out of support for Chrome with this version is macOS X 10.10 Yosemite. Users of Apple’s operating system who want to continue using Chrome up to date must have OS X 10.11 or later.
If you’re using Windows 10 you’ll also notice that the dark theme is now better, you won’t see any light colored scrollbars in the dark theme, but the browser interface will adapt better to the rest of the system’s appearance.
Tab search and improved password protection
One of the most interesting functions that the browser now integrates is the tab search, especially useful for tab accumulators, which end up with a completely unreadable thumbnail space.
With this function active, a new button will be added at the end of the top bar of Chrome, a button with a down arrow that will show a list with all the open tabs if we click on it, and that in addition to the list, it will show a search engine where we can write anything to quickly find a specific tab.
Unfortunately, this feature is not active by default, but we can easily enable it from the flags or experimental options of Chrome. Just type chrome://flags/#enable-tab-search, enable the feature and restart the browser.
Search is not the only new feature related to improving the experience in managing tabs that the Chrome team is working on. Chrome 88 also brings a feature improved password protection, it contains passwords that you saved directly to Chrome, which are considered weak by the browser. By clicking the “change password” button next to these passwords, you can go to the relevant website and set a stronger password.