After releasing Chrome 88 this week, Google has announced a host of new password protection features it will begin rolling out to Chrome 88 in coming weeks.
Chrome 88 includes a new feature to quickly check for weak or compromised passwords and remediate the issue. After clicking on the profile avatar, there’s now a key icon that can be clicked to begin checking for weak passwords.
Also in Chrome 88, users can manage and edit all passwords in Chrome Settings on the desktop and iOS. Google is planning to bring this feature to the Android Chrome app soon. The feature is meant to make it easier to update saved passwords in a central place, as opposed to relying only on Chrome prompts to update single passwords when logging into websites.
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Thanks to Chrome’s Safety Check that alerts users to any compromised credentials they have, Google says it’s seen a 37% reduction in comprised credentials stored in Chrome. Additionally, Safety Check is used 14 million times each week, according to Google.
Google last year enabled iOS users to autofill passwords saved in Chrome into other apps and browsers. It’s now doing this for three million sign-ins across iOS apps every week.
Last year, Google added biometric authentication for the autofill feature on iOS and it will soon be bringing this additional protection to Chrome on Android. Before autofilling, iOS users need to use Touch ID, Face ID, or the phone’s passcode before autofilling a saved password into another app or website.
The password management features with Chrome 88 will be rolled out over the coming weeks, Google says.
Chrome 88, released earlier the week, was the first version of Chrome in years to not include Adobe Flash Player in the browser. Flash reached end of life at the end of 2020, so Mozilla, Google, Apple and Microsoft have also dropped support for Flash in their respective browsers.
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FTP support was also disabled in Chrome 88, which also now blocks HTTP file downloads from HTTPS web pages.
Chrome 88 ships with an experimental feature for searching all tabs via a new popup window that can be accessed by clicking a downward arrow above the user avatar. To test tab search, users can go to chrome://flags/ and search for “Enable Tab Search”.
Users can also test out a new “Force Dark Mode for Web Contents” feature in Chrome 88. Again, it’s an experimental feature in chrome://flags/ that can help ensure websites with white backgrounds have black backgrounds instead.
