Google’s Chrome team announced the general availability of Google Chrome 61 Stable today on the official Chrome Releases blog.
The new version of the web browser will be rolled out over the coming days and weeks to all devices that run the browser on Windows, Mac or Linux systems.
Since Chrome 61 is a security release, it is recommended to update to the new version as soon as possible.
You can run an update check for the new version by loading chrome://help/ in the browser’s address bar. Chrome will query the update server when the page opens and download new versions immediately.
You may notice that the location of the help page changed after the update, as Chrome’s help page is located at chrome://settings/help in Chrome 61. It also looks different to the help page before as it is now more in line with the Settings page of the browser.
The Chrome team offers little information on the new release; the only information that is provided is that Chrome 61.0.3163.79 “contains a number of fixes and improvements”, and that it includes 22 security fixes on top of that.
You can check out the full change log on this page, but will spend an hour or more going through it as it is full of entries and difficult to go through quickly because of how the entries are displayed on the page.
Here are some of the more important changes in Chrome 61 according to the official changelog:
- Add initial set of new default user images.
- Autoplay policy for HTML5 video: chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy
- Data Saver site breakdown doesn’t add up to totals on version update. Also, don’t show negative savings.
- DevTools: Add ‘Save profile’ toolbar button to performance panel.
- Disable first run for mananged profiles.
- [Extensions] Don’t allow content scripts on the New Tab Page.
- Enable automatically detected CUPS printers in the print preview dialog.
- Enable asm.js -> WebAssembly by default.
- Keep scanned host devices in the cache for longer (from 5 minutes to 2 hours).
- Move extension unzip/unpack to background thread to prevent the blocking of the main utility thread.
- On dual-GPU macs, blacklist MSAA for both GPUs if either is Intel.
- Switch pause/mute buttons’ locations in RTL languages
Read also: Gmail Sender Icons for Chrome: better sender identification
The bulk of the changes that went into Chrome 61 are under the hood changes.
Now You: Did you notice anything new in Chrome 61 after the update?