With an estimated 1 billion users, Google's Chrome browser is the undisputed king of browsers at the moment, in 2015. That said, many users aren't familiar with some of the basic features and cool things that Chrome allows you to do. Here are ten not so well known Chrome tips that we feel every user should know. Now, you could keep them to yourself and feel smug every time a noob comes to you for help, but we hope you share them so that everyone can have a better surfing experience. With that said, here are ten tips we feel every Chrome user should know:
1. Convert units directly in the Omnibox
So first things first. You must be wondering what is this "Omnibox"? Well the Omnibox is the fancy name for the Google Chrome's address bar. It is similar to a traditional browser address bar, but it also allows you to perform other functions such as "search", calculations and conversions as well as we shall see.
Let's say we want to find out what 120 square meters is in square feet. Simply type 120 square meters = square feet in the address bar and you'll see your answer. The format is as follows:
X Unit 1 = Unit 2
2. Use Omnibox to search within a site
If you've visited a page on your Chrome browser before, you can search within that site direct from the Omnibox, without having to visit the site again. For example, to search for the new Star Wars movie on IMDB, type IMDB.com and press the tab key. Now you can enter "Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens" and hit enter. Your results will show matching search results from IMDB.com.
3. Open search results in a new tab
If you want to open your search results in a new tab instead of the current one, hold down the alt key and hit enter to search. Your search results will now open in a new tab. This works whether searching using the Omnibox.
4. Re-open a Closed Tab
It happens to the best of us - accidentally closing a tab. Not to worry, if you closed a tab by mistake, you can open it again using CTRL+SHIFT+T. The hotkey will cycle through your closed tabs so hitting it again will relaunch the tab you closed before the last one and so on.
5. Save web pages as PDFs
If you want to save a page for offline reading, Google Chrome has a built-in PDF writer that comes in very handy. On any webpage, press Ctrl+P and choose the “Save as PDF” option from the list of available printers.
6. Incognito Window
Press Control + Shift + "N" to open Chrome window in incognito mode. Sites you visit in incognito mode won't appear in your history and any cookies from the sites opened in this browser window will be deleted when the window is closed. Very useful if you share your computer and don't want embarrassing sites popping up in your search history.
It's important to note that although your browser history and cookies are deleted, your web surfing tracks are still visible to your network provider, such as your employer or ISP via the network logs. There are other practical uses for incognito mode as well, other than keeping your surfing history private (somewhat).
Using Incognito mode, you can log in to multiple accounts on Facebook, Gmail and other sites from the same device. It also allows you to get unbiased search results as Google will not base your search results on prior search history and cookies.
7. Chrome Task Manager
Everyone knows the Windows Task Manager but do you know that Google Chrome has it's own Task Manager as well? Pressing Shift + Esc in Chrome brings up the Chrome task manager which you can then use to end any process running in Chrome that is eating up memory. To do so, click on the process you want to close followed by "End process" at the bottom right of the dialog box.
8. Switch to Google's cached version of a page
Looking for a post or article that got taken down? Google caches many of the pages on the Internet as a record to bring you search results faster. Because of this, you might still be able to retrieve sites or posts that have been taken down. In the address bar, type "cache:" before the URL of the page and hit enter. You'll be taken to the last cached page of that URL by Google, if one is available. In the above image, we looked up the cache for CNN.com and Google retrieved the cache it had of the page from the previous night instead.
9. Chrome Experiments
Type "chrome://flags" in the address bar to open the Chrome Experiments page. Here you can test out some cool, new and experimental Chrome features before they get deployed in production for the wider audience. As these features are still in the experimental stage and haven't been certified safe for the wider audience, they come with a warning that your browser may delete all your data, or your security and privacy could be compromised in unexpected ways. Proceed with caution!
10. Mute audio of an individual Chrome tab
Here's a cool experimental feature we found in the Chrome flags list. Search for Enable tab audio muting UI control" in the Chrome flags list and click "enable". After restarting your Chrome browser, you will be able to mute the audio of an individual Chrome Tab directly from the audio indicators on the tab strip as we've shown in the above picture. Pretty cool and convenient when you have many tabs open!
Conclusion
So these are our top ten lesser known Google Chrome tips that will take your surfing experience to the next level. We hope you've enjoyed them and will find them useful. Do like and share them on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter using the links below.
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