Chrome 70 adds support for AV1 video, improves PWA on Windows, and more. [APK Download]



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Chrome 69 was a massive update because it brought a whole new interface to desktop and mobile computers. Chrome 70 is not such a drastic change, but it includes some important new features, such as support for the AV1 video codec and TLS 1.3.

AV1 support

Almost exactly 10 years ago, Google released its own video codec to compete with H.264, called VP8. Although there is not much technological difference between the two formats, VP8 is royalty-free, while H.264 requires a license. Android supports VP8 natively since Gingerbread 2.3, and all major browsers (except Safari) can play VP8 encoded video.

Google is now part of the Alliance for Open Media, a group of companies working to create a successor to VP8 / VP9, ​​called AV1. Facebook has tested AV1 with hundreds of popular videos and found that the format included "30% greater compression than VP9, ​​and 50.3%, 46.2% and 34.0% gains, to the main profile x264, high profile x264 and libvpx-vp9, respectively. "

Starting with Chrome 70, AV1 support is now enabled by default on desktop and Android platforms. Although it will probably take some time before AV1 knows any widespread use, since no other browser supports it at the moment, this is definitely an important step.

Progressive Web applications on Windows

While most of the work of supporting progressive Web applications has been done on mobile, Google does not forget about desktop users. Chrome 67 has added an install button to PWA on the desktop and Chrome 70 includes several enhancements for Windows users.

Chrome on Windows now displays an "Install Application?" popup on the PWA (after an interaction with them for a while). If you agree, Chrome will create a Start menu entry for the application. Just like with the shortcuts you could create before, the browser UI is hidden when a progressive web application is opened.

Google indicates that this feature should arrive for Mac and Linux with Chrome 72.

Shape detection API

Web applications already have many ways to read barcodes or identify faces, usually using JavaScript machine learning. very slow. To make this feature more accessible and improve performance, Google adds its own form detection feature to Chrome.

The form detection API is in Chrome 70 as an "original test", which means that it is not ready for widespread use. The API can detect three types of objects in images: faces, barcodes and text. At the moment, compatibility varies from one platform to another because the host operating system must have the required object-detection capabilities. You can try a demo here.

TLS 1.3

Transport Layer Security, or TLS for short, is the protocol for securely transferring data over the Internet. When you are on an HTTPS site, the data is probably sent via TLS. Chrome 70 includes support for TLS version 1.3, which was finalized last month.

A list of changes can be found here, but in summary, it improves efficiency and security. To establish a secure connection, the number of round trips is reduced. You may see a slight improvement in loading time (if the site you are visiting is compatible with TLS 1.3). Here is a graphical representation of the CloudFlare modification:

TLS 1.3 also removes support for some legacy features, such as SHA1 and MD5. Google said this on the Chrome platform's status page:

TLS 1.3 was a multi-year project covering various contributions from industry, academic research groups and other participants in the standardization process. We had previously experimented with previous versions of the standard and, once the last standard is over, we are now excited to receive it in Chrome.

Firefox v60 added support for TLS 1.3 (project 23), released in May this year. CloudFlare has also been using the standard since May.

Other features

As always, Chrome 70 includes changes for users and developers. Here are some smaller features provided with this update:

  • The speech synthesis API will only work if the page has already been interacted. This was commonly used by mobile spamware popups because it was not included in the new Chrome 66 autoplay strategy.
  • Touch ID on Macbook Pros can now be used as a login method for the Web Authentication API.
  • If a page is in full screen mode and displays a pop-up window, the page will now exit full screen mode.
  • AppCache no longer works on non-HTTPS pages.
  • On Android devices, the operating system version number (for example, "NJH47F") no longer appears in the user agent's string, so that you can not use it. 39, prevent fingerprints. Chrome on iOS will freeze the build number at "15E148" instead of removing it completely, to track the implementation of Safari.
  • Opus sound is now supported in MP4, Ogg and WebM container files.
  • WebUSB now uses dedicated work contexts, which should improve performance.
  • Web Bluetooth now works on Windows 10.
  • There is a new sync dialog on desktop platforms (thanks Edric).
  • Service workers can now be appointed.
  • The identification information management API now supports public key identification information.
  • The original APIs Custom Elements, HTML Imports, navigator.getGamepads, and Shadow DOM are now obsolete.

APK Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing application. The cryptographic signature ensures that the file can be safely installed and has not been tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to transfer this download to your devices, which may take days, download it and install it as any other APK.

Version: 70.0.3538.64

Google Chrome: Fast & Secure
Google Chrome: Fast & Secure
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