Chrome 61 has begun rolling out to desktop and Android users bringing a host of new security fixes and new features. For desktop users, there are a lot of developer-friendly introductions like the WebUSB API support, and for Android users there’s the addition of Web Share API, and more user-friendly features, the most notable being the updated Google Translate toolbar.
Version 61 of Chrome for Windows, Mac, and Linux users brings WebUSB API support, full availability of PaymentRequest API, and more. The WebUSB API support allows Web apps to communicate with additional hardware accessories apart from the usual ones like keyboard, mice, and printers. This includes access to industrial, scientific, and education-related USB accessories.
With full availability of PaymentRequest API, developers can now offer secure, seamless checkout experiences across platforms. The Device RAM API is now available on Chrome 61, letting developers know the amount of RAM on a user’s device to sites to optimize overall performance of a web application. Also, the Network Information API is now available on desktop as well as Android, enabling sites to access the underlying connection information of a device.
Lastly, Chrome 61 is important because it brings 22 security fixes, and all of them are listed here.
Chrome 61.0.3163.79 should reach all users in the coming weeks. If you haven’t already received the update, check manually by clicking the menu icon, navigating to Help > About Chrome, and see if the latest version has arrived. If it has, it will automatically start updating to the latest version.
Chrome 61 for Android brings an updated Google Translate toolbar that allows you to switch between preferred languages, and change the default one if you so desire. The floating menu that shows up when you press and hold a link or image has also been changed to be more intuitive and show common actions first.
For video using native controls, Chrome 61 will now automatically expand video to full-screen when a user rotates their device in an orientation that matches a video playing on the screen. Furthermore, when navigating from an installed Wweb app to a site outside the initial Web app’s scope, the new site now automatically loads in a Custom Chrome Tab.
There’s also the addition of WebShare API to trigger the native Android share dialogue, allowing the user to easily share text or links with any of their installed native apps. In a future release, this API will also be able to share to installed Web apps. Earlier, developers have had to manually integrate sharing buttons into their site for each social service. This often leads to users not being able to share with the services they actually use, in addition to bloated page sizes and security risks from including third-party code.
