Earlier this month, Chrome was discovered to be finally moving to a 64-bit architecture in its Canary v85 build, which could enable better utilization of RAM. Today, Chrome is migrating v85 to the Beta channel, bringing 64-bit support and other features like URL hiding, Support for AVIF image decoding and more.
A major feature that Google is currently testing across their Chrome browser on various platforms is the ability to hide URLs in the omnibox. There appears to be two methods to implement this feature — one way to hide the full path until the mouse hovers over the URL bar, and the other way is to hide the path until the page is interacted with.
Google did confirm that users will be given the choice to “Always show full URLs” if they wish to do so.
Other changes in this version include:
- Support for AVIF image decoding is now enabled by default, but only on desktop platforms.
- The WebHID API is now an Origin Trial.
- App shortcuts for PWAs are now enabled by default on desktop platforms.
- The Web Bluetooth API has received a new event listener for advertising packets and a new getDevices() method.
- Dragging and dropping files on the desktop has been improved.