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 100 is beta as of March 3. 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.
Chromium 100 will be the last version to support an unreduced User-Agent string by default (as well as the related navigator.userAgent, navigator.appVersion, and navigator.platform DOM APIs). The origin trial that allowed sites to test the fully reduced User-Agent will end on April 19, 2022. After that date, the User-Agent String will be gradually reduced. To review the whole schedule, see Chromium Blog: User-Agent Reduction Origin Trial and Dates. Sites that need more time to test or migrate to User-Agent Client Hints can enroll in the deprecation origin trial scheduled from Chrome 100 to 113, inclusive. In contrast to the first origin trial, which previews the fully reduced User-Agent string, the deprecation trial maintains the legacy User-Agent. The deprecation trial is expected to end in late May of 2023.
navigator.userAgent
navigator.appVersion
navigator.platform
This is part of a strategy to replace use of the User-Agent string with the new User-Agent Client Hints API. To learn about User-Agent Client Hints, see Migrate to User-Agent Client Hints and Improving user privacy and developer experience with User-Agent Client Hints.
The Multi-Screen Window Placement API, now available on desktop, lets you enumerate the displays connected to your machine and to place windows on specific screens. This unlocks use cases like multi-window apps that need to accurately position certain windows. It also adds a new screen option to the Element.requestFullscreen() method which allows you to determine which screen to start a full screen view on.
screen
Element.requestFullscreen()
For more information, see Managing several displays with the Multi-Screen Window Placement API.
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 Chrome Origin Trials dashboard. To learn more about origin trials in Chrome, visit the Origin Trials Guide for Web Developers. Microsoft Edge runs its own origin trials separate from Chrome. To learn more, see the Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Developer Console.
The following origin trial is being extended to the listed version.
Chrome is continuing an origin trial for making the Media Source Extensions (MSE) API available from dedicated workers. This feature improves performance when buffering playing media in an HTMLMediaElement on the main Window. By creating a MediaSource object in a dedicated worker, an application may then create an ObjectURL for it and call postMessage() to pass that URL to the main thread for attaching to an HTMLMediaElement. The context that created the MediaSource object may then use it to buffer media. Web authors have consistently requested that MSE be available from Worker contexts. This extended origin trial is expected to end in Chrome 103, in late July 2022.
HTMLMediaElement
MediaSource
postMessage()
The following feature, previously in a Chrome origin trial, is now enabled by default.
Chrome now provides an API for querying and managing digital products to facilitate in-app purchases from web applications. The new API works with the Payment Request API, which is used for the actual purchases. The API can be linked to a digital distribution service connected through the user agent. In Chromium, this is specifically a web API wrapper around the Android Play Billing API.
This API lets web apps in the Play Store 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.
For more information, see Receive Payments via Google Play Billing with the Digital Goods API and the Payment Request API - Chrome Developers.
Chrome now throws an AbortSignal object's reason if the signal is aborted. This convenience method allows signal-handling functions to check a signal's abort status and propagate the abort reason. For example, it could be called after asynchronous operations that might change a signal's state.
AbortSignal
Abort signal handling functions often need to check the signal's status and propagate the error if the signal has been aborted. This provides a convenient and consistent way to do this. An example is already available on MDN.
Capability delegation means allowing a frame to relinquish its ability to call a restricted API and transfer that ability to a (sub) frame it trusts. If an app wants to delegate its ability to call a restricted JavaScript feature (for example, popups, or fullscreen) to a known and trusted third-party frame, this API allows it to transfer this ability to the target frame for a specified period. This is in contrast to static mechanisms such as an iframe's allow attributes.
Many merchant websites host their online store on their own domain but outsource the payment collection and processing infrastructure to a payment service provider (PSP) to comply with security and regulatory complexities around card payments. This workflow is implemented as a "pay" button inside the top (merchant) frame where it can blend better with the rest of the merchant's website, and payment request code inside a cross-origin iframe from the PSP. The Payment Request API used by the PSP code is gated by transient user activation (to prevent malicious attempts like unattended or repeated payment requests). Because the top (merchant) frame's user interaction is not visible to the iframe, the PSP code needs to delegate in response to a click in the top frame before it can start payment processing.
The HIDDevice forget() method allows web developers to voluntarily revoke a permission to an HIDDevice that was granted by a user. Some sites may not be interested in retaining long-term permissions to access HID devices. For example, for an educational web application used on a shared computer with many devices, a large number of accumulated user-generated permissions creates a poor user experience. In addition to user agent mitigations to avoid this problem, such as defaulting to a session scoped permission on the first request or expiring infrequently used permissions, it should be possible for the site itself to clean up user-generated permissions it no longer needs.
HIDDevice
forget()
The mix-blend-mode property now supports the "plus-lighter" value, which adds the source and destination colors multiplied by their respective alphas. This operation is useful when crossfading between two elements that contain common pixels. In that case, "plus-lighter" ensures that the common pixels do not change in appearance as opacity changes from 0 to 1 on one element and from 1 to 0 on the other.
mix-blend-mode
"plus-lighter"
This hint serves solely as a backwards compatible shim for sites relying on "WoW64-ness" (32-bit apps running in 64-bit Windows) as they transition from the User-Agent string to UA-CH. It returns a boolean value.
When using WritableStream, serial ports can now be closed without waiting for all write operations to finish. If the port is waiting for the peer device to provide a flow control signal it could be blocked indefinitely. The intent of aborting a WritableStream is to immediately stop writing data to the underlying sink.
WritableStream
The TLS ALPN extension is now included when initiating a new connection for wss-schemed WebSockets, offering just the default "http/1.1" protocol. Currently, unlike HTTPS connections, such connections do not offer ALPN at all. Changing this aligns with Firefox and Safari, hardens against cross-protocol attacks (ALPACA, for example), and makes wss eligible for the false start optimization. It also simplifies work on the HTTPS DNS record.
WebSockets
The NDEFReader makeReadOnly() method allows web developers to make NFC tags permanently read-only with Web NFC.
NDEFReader
makeReadOnly()
In WebTransport, the serverCertificateHashes option allows a website to connect to a web transport server by authenticating the certificate against the expected certificate hash instead of using the Web public key infrastructure (PKI).
WebTransport
serverCertificateHashes
This feature allows Web developers to connect to WebTransport servers that would normally find obtaining a publicly trusted certificate challenging, such as hosts that are not publically routable, or virtual machines that are ephemeral in nature.
This version of Chrome has only one deprecation, described at the top of this article. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of ongoing deprecations and previous removals.
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 99 is beta as of February 3, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.
This year, Chrome will release version 100, adding a digit to the version number reported in Chrome's user agent string. To help site owners test for the new string, Chrome 96 introduced a runtime flag that causes Chrome to return '100' in its user agent string. This new flag called chrome://flags/#force-major-version-to-100 has been available since Chrome 96. For more information, see Force Chrome major version to 100 in the User-Agent string.
CSS cascade layers (@layer rule and layered @import syntax) provide a structured way to organize and balance concerns within a single origin. Rules within a single cascade layer cascade together without interleaving with style rules outside the layer. This allows authors to achieve a certain cascade ordering for same-origin rules in a proper way.
@layer
@import
Cascade layers allow authors to create layers to represent element defaults, third-party libraries, themes, components, overrides, etc.—and are able to re-order the cascade of layers in an explicit way. Without cascade layers, authors need to tweak, e.g., selector specificity, @import or source ordering to achieve a certain cascade ordering, which is cumbersome and error-prone.
For more information, see Cascade layers are coming to your browser.
The new showPicker() method on HTMLInputElement allows web developers to programmatically show a browser picker for input elements (temporal, color, file, and those with suggestions like datalist or autofill).
showPicker()
HTMLInputElement
Developers have been asking for years for a way to programmatically open a browser date picker. Without it, they've had to rely on custom widget libraries and CSS hacks for specific browsers.
This is currently possible in some browsers, for some controls, via the click() method. Unfortunately, that doesn't work in all browsers, making the experience inconsistent across systems and users. Providing showPicker() gives developers a supported alternative to click(), and aligns Chromium's click() behavior with the specification and other browsers in in the future. For more information, see Show a browser picker for date, time, color, and files.
click()
Web app manifests now support the color_scheme_dark field for specifying a different theme color and background color for dark mode. Currently in the web app manifest, only a single theme color and background color can be defined. This means there is no way for apps to specify a different color to use for dark mode.
The following features, previously in a Chrome origin trial, are now enabled by default.
This API lets web applications use handwriting recognition services that are available on operating systems to recognize hand-written text in real time. This reduces the need for third-party integration by apps that use handwriting recognition. For more information, see Recognize your users' handwriting.
Window controls overlay extends an app's client area to cover the entire window, including the title bar, and the window control buttons (close, maximize/restore, minimize). The web app developer is responsible for drawing and input-handling for the entire window except for the window controls overlay. Developers can use this feature to make their installed desktop web apps look like operating system apps. For more information, see Customize the window controls overlay of your PWA's title bar.
To improve conformance with the spec, the CSS calc() method now allows infinity and NaN using the 'infinity', '-infinity', and 'NaN' keywords or expressions that can be evaluated as such, for example: 'calc(1/0)'.
calc()
'infinity'
'-infinity'
'NaN'
Note: This feature was erroneously listed as shipping in Chrome 98. It actually shipped in Chrome 99.
The only keyword, which has been re-added to the specification for color-scheme, is now supported in Chrome. It allows opting out of color-scheme for single, specific elements. For example, this allows overriding of force darkening. A few examples illustrate its use.
color-scheme
div { color-scheme: light }
This forces the div element out of color-scheme dark.
div
div { color-scheme: only light }
This keeps the color-scheme for the element light as above, and opts it out of forced darkening by the user agent.
In compliance with the spec, the document.adoptedStyleSheets property is now mutable, meaning operations such as push() and pop() work on it. The previous implementation of adoptedStyleSheets was unwieldy. For example, to add a sheet, the entire array had to be re-assigned:
document.adoptedStyleSheets
push()
pop()
adoptedStyleSheets
document.adoptedStyleSheets = [...adoptedStyleSheets, newSheet];
With the new implementation, the same operation looks like this:
document.adoptedStyleSheets.push(newSheet);
Note: Previously, this feature was incorrectly listed as shipping in Chrome 98.
The PerformanceResourceTiming interface exposes the nextHopProtocol property to describe the underlying connection type used to fetch a resource. To follow the spec, Chrome is removing an old special case where cross-origin requests exposed potentially sensitive information, putting users at risk.
PerformanceResourceTiming
nextHopProtocol
Chrome has added several new attributes to the CanvasRenderingContext2D interface to conform to specs:
CanvasRenderingContext2D
ContextLost
ContextRestored
"willReadFrequently"
roundRect
For more information, see It's always been you Canvas2D.
Chrome 99 introduces unprefixed versions of text emphasis CSS properties, specifically: "text-emphasis", "text-emphasis-color", "text-emphasis-position", and "text-emphasis-style" CSS properties. These are unprefixed versions of "-webkit-text-emphasis", "-webkit-text-emphasis-color", "-webkit-text-emphasis-position", and "-webkit-text-emphasis-style".
"text-emphasis"
"text-emphasis-color"
"text-emphasis-position"
"text-emphasis-style"
"-webkit-text-emphasis"
"-webkit-text-emphasis-color"
"-webkit-text-emphasis-position"
"-webkit-text-emphasis-style"
This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of current deprecations and previous removals.
Battery Status API is no longer supported on insecure origins, such as HTTP pages or HTTPS iframes embedded in HTTP pages. The Battery Status API allows web developers to access, among other things, a system's battery charging level and whether it is being charged. It is a powerful feature that has been around for over a decade and, as such, was originally designed with different security constraints.
This version of Chrome removes support for the font-family value "-webkit-standard". This value is merely an alias for the proprietary keyword "-webkit-body" and is only exposed because it's inherited from WebKit. Removing this improves alignment with the CSS specifications and with Firefox.
font-family
"-webkit-standard"
"-webkit-body"
The navigator.getGamepads() method now returns an array of Gamepad objects instead of a GamepadList. GamepadList is no longer supported in Chrome. This brings Chrome in line with spec and with Gecko and Webkit. For information on Gamepads generally, see Play the Chrome dino game with your gamepad.
navigator.getGamepads()
Gamepad
GamepadList
Chrome has removed two items because of recent changes in the WebCodecs spec..The EncodedVideoChunkOutputCallback() method takes an EncodedVideoChunkMetadata dictionary. Previously a member called temporalLayerId was located at EncodedVideoChunkMetadata.temporalLayerId. In conformance with the spec, it is now located at EncodedVideoChunkMetadata.SvcOutputMetadata.temporalLayerId.The spec requires that the VideoFrame() constructor include a timestamp argument (VideoFrameInit.timestamp) for CanvasImageSource types that don't implicitly have a timestamp (e.g. HTMLCanvasElement). Failing to include the timestamp should result in a TypeError, but Chrome previously defaulted the timestamp to zero. This seems helpful, but is problematic if you then send the VideoFrame to a VideoEncoder, where timestamps are used to guide bitrate control.
EncodedVideoChunkOutputCallback()
EncodedVideoChunkMetadata
EncodedVideoChunkMetadata.temporalLayerId
EncodedVideoChunkMetadata.SvcOutputMetadata.temporalLayerId
VideoFrame()
VideoFrameInit.timestamp
CanvasImageSource
HTMLCanvasElement
TypeError
VideoFrame
VideoEncoder
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 98 is beta as of January 10, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.
In this version Chrome supports COLRv1 color gradient vector fonts as an additional new font format. A color font contains glyphs with multiple colors in them, which can be for example an emoji or a country flag or a multi-colored letter.
COLRv1 is an evolution of the COLRv0 font format intended to make color fonts widespread on the web. COLRv1 fonts bring expressive visual capabilities such as gradients, transforms and compositions at a very small font size. COLRv1 fonts also support OpenType variations. Internal shape reuse and a compact font format definition, plus effective compression, lead to very small font sizes.
The image illustrates the example of Noto Color Emoji, which is about 9MB as a bitmap font, but only 1.85MB as a COLRv1 vector font (after WOFF2 compression).
For more information, see COLRv1 Color Gradient Vector Fonts in Chrome 98.
This year, Chrome will release version 100, adding a digit to the version number reported in Chrome's user agent string. To help site owners test for the new string, Chrome 96 introduced a runtime flag that causes Chrome to return '100' in its user agent string. This new flag called chrome://flags/#force-major-version-to-100 has been available from Chrome 96 onward. For more information, see Force Chrome major version to 100 in the User-Agent string.
Region Capture is an API for cropping a self-capture video track. Applications can currently obtain a capture of the tab in which they run using getDisplayMedia(), either with or without preferCurrentTab. In this case, the application may want to crop the resulting video track to remove some content from it (typically before sharing it remotely).
getDisplayMedia()
preferCurrentTab
Support for the auto keyword in contain-intrinsic-size is added, letting websites use the last-remembered size of an element (if any), which provides for a better user experience than for elements with content-visibility: auto. Without this feature, web developers have to guess the rendered size of the element; when used with content-visibility: auto, this may lead to elements jumping around.
contain-intrinsic-size
content-visibility: auto
The new AudioContext.outputLatency property is an estimate in seconds of audio output latency. Technically, this is the interval between the time the user agent requests the host system to buffer and the time at which the first sample in the buffer is processed by the audio output device. For devices such as speakers or headphones that produce an acoustic signal, this latter time refers to the time when a sample's sound is produced. This is already implemented in Firefox.
AudioContext.outputLatency
only
This forces the div element out of color-scheme dark. div { color-scheme: only light }
In compliance with the spec, the document.adoptedStyleSheets property is now mutable, meaning operations such as push() and pop() now work on it. The previous implementation of adoptedStyleSheets was unwieldy. For example, to add a sheet, the entire array had to be re-assigned: document.adoptedStyleSheets = [...adoptedStyleSheets, newSheet]; With the new implementation, the same operation looks like this:
Chrome now supports the CSS media queries 'dynamic-range' and 'video-dynamic-range' for detecting the current display device's support for HDR. Possible values are 'standard' and 'high'. These queries allow pages to toggle CSS rules or respond using Window.matchMedia().
'dynamic-range'
'video-dynamic-range'
'standard'
'high'
Window.matchMedia()
As per a spec update, this version of Chrome lets you specify whether window.open() launches a new window or a new tab. The following examples show the new syntax. The first will open a pop up window. The second will open a new tab or window. const popup = window.open('_blank','','popup=1'); const tab = window.open('_blank','','popup=0'); Additionally, window.statusbar.visible now correctly returns correct values: specifically, false for popups, and true for tabs, and windows.
window.open()
const popup = window.open('_blank','','popup=1'); const tab = window.open('_blank','','popup=0');
window.statusbar.visible
false
true
CORS preflight requests are now sent ahead of private network requests for subresources, asking for explicit permission from the target server. A private network request is any request from a public website to a private IP address or localhost, or from a private website (e.g. intranet) to localhost. Sending a preflight request mitigates the risk of cross-site request forgery attacks against private network devices such as routers, which are often not prepared to defend against this threat.
Windows and Workers now support the structuredClone() methods for making deep copies of objects. A deep copy is one that copies an object's properties, but invokes itself recursively when it finds a reference to another object, creating a copy of that object as well. This ensures that two pieces of code don't accidentally share an object and unknowingly manipulate each others' state. For an explanation of deep copies and how to use them, see Deep-copying in JavaScript using structuredClone.
structuredClone()
Chrome now exposes the CTAP 2.1 minPinLength extension via Web Authentication. This allows sites preconfigured for a security key to learn the configured minimum PIN length for the authenticator.
When the window controls overlay is enabled for installed desktop web apps, the app's client area is extended to cover the entire window—including the title bar area—and the window control buttons (close, maximize/restore, minimize) are overlaid on top of the client area. The web developer is responsible for drawing and input-handling for the entire window except for the window controls overlay. Developers can use this feature to make their installed desktop web apps look like OS apps.
WritableStreamDefaultController now supports a signal property which returns an instance of AbortSignal, allowing a WritableStream operation to be stopped if needed. The streams APIs provide ubiquitous, interoperable primitives for creating, composing, and consuming streams of data. This change permits an underlying sink to rapidly abort an ongoing write or close when requested by the writer. Previously, when writer.abort() was called, a long-running write would still have to continue to completion before the stream could be aborted. With this change, the write can be aborted immediately. In addition to being exposed to streams authored in JavaScript, this facility will also be used by platform-provided streams such as WebTransport.
WritableStreamDefaultController
writer.abort()
The SDES key exchange mechanism for WebRTC has been declared a MUST NOT in the relevant IETF standards since 2013. Its usage in Chrome has declined significantly over the last year. SDES is removed because it is a security problem. It exposes session keys to Javascript, which means that entities with access to the negotiation exchange, or with the ability to subvert the Javascript, can decrypt the media sent over the connection.
