Google just released Chrome 66 for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS, a new version of its popular browsing app that packs a few exciting features.
The most important one, if you ask me, a person who’s spending way too much time looking at screens and browsing the web, concerns auto-playing content. That’s right, once you upgrade your Chrome browser to the latest version, annoying videos won’t play automatically as soon as you load the page. In theory.
In practice, I just discovered that Chrome 66 won’t automatically block auto-playing videos on all sites, which means the annoyance is still there. The best example is YouTube. Opening a YouTube link in Chrome 66 should not auto-play the video, as it’s usually the case.
So mileage may vary going forward. You still can mute sites entirely, a feature that was added to Chrome 64, by right-clicking on a tab. So there’s that, at least.
Mind you, this blocking of auto-playing clips should happen by default, which means you shouldn’t dig in the app’s settings for a toggle to enable it. Shrug emoji.
On top of other fixes and improvements, there’s one other neat Chrome 66 feature worth talking about, and that’s the Export Passwords feature, which is self-explanatory. If you’re relying on Chrome to remember the passwords to the sites you use most, then you should know you can finally export those passwords to an actual password manager app if you so desire.
You’ll have to go to Settings for this one, and look for the Passwords menu in the Advanced tab. The feature is available on mobile as well as desktop.
Chrome 66 is available right away, so go grab it by visiting the About Chrome page, which will automatically start the download.
