Chrome 55 for Mac, Windows, and Linux was a major update that has the browser default to HTML5 in a bid to further kill Flash usage. Rolling out now, version 55 for Android adds a ‘Downloads’ feature that saves sites, music, and video for offline viewing, as well as improvements for low-memory devices.
A new save icon at the top of the overflow menu allows users to save full web page, including text and images. Meanwhile, audio and video player controls will feature a save icon next to the scrubber to initiate the background download. Also accessible from the overflow menu, all saved content and media is organized in a new ‘Downloads’ screen.
It features a chronological list and a navigation drawer to sort content by pages, video, audio, images, and documents, while listing how much storage Chrome downloads are taking up. From here, users can long tap on multiple saved items to quickly share or delete.
Other minor user interface tweaks include improvements to the contextual search UI and Chrome highlighting misspelled words in text fields.
Under the hood, low-memory devices will see a big boost with version 55. Thanks to JavaScript Heap Size Reduction and Zone Memory Reduction devices with less than a 1GB of RAM— specifically 512MB and under— will see up to 35% less memory usage. However, all devices will benefit from the latter reduction due to lower memory consumption during background parsing.
Chrome 55 for Android is rolling out now, with the corresponding version already available on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
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