Google is celebrating Chrome's 10th birthday, and the browser's latest update is bigger than normal.
First up, Chrome has a new look. You can see it across all platforms-desktop, Android, and iOS-where you'll notice more rounded shapes, new icons and a new color palette. Take tabs, for instance. Google changed the shape of our tabs so that the website icons are easier to see, which makes it easier to navigate across lots of tabs. On mobile, Google has made a number of changes to help you browse faster, including moving the toolbar to the bottom on iOS, so it's easy to reach. And across Chrome, Google simplified the prompts, menus, and even the URLs in your address bar.
In addition, Chrome can more accurately fill in your passwords, addresses, and credit card numbers, so that you can breeze through online checkout forms. All this information is saved to your Google account, and can also now be accessed directly from the Chrome toolbar.
Google has also improved the way Chrome handles passwords. When it's time to create a new password, Chrome will now generate one for you. Chrome will save it, and next time you sign in, it'll be there, on both your laptop and phone.
The company is also making changes to the Omnibox -- the top of Chrome that combines the search bar and address bar into one. It will now show you answers directly in the address bar without having to open a new tab-from rich results on public figures or sporting events, to instant answers like the local weather via weather.com or a translation of a foriegn word.
Plus, a bonus if you find yourself with two dozen tabs open across three browser windows: Search for a website in your Omnibox and Chrome will tell you if it's already open and let you jump straight to it with "Switch to tab." Soon, you'll be able to search files from your Google Drive directly in your Omnibox too.
You can now create and manage shortcuts to your favorite websites directly from the new tab page-simply open a new tab and "Add shortcut." And as if you needed an excuse to look at more pictures of your dog, you can now customize the background of a newly-opened tab with a photo of Fido.
"Bbehind the scenes" improvements to Chrome include a set of new experiments to improve Chrome's startup time, latency, usage of memory, and usability.