Chrome is already pretty customizable without Chrome Commands. Plugins can help you save money while online shopping and correct your grammar and spelling as you type. Extensions can speed up the browser, and Google is good about updating things so that users can turn off features they don’t like, and viruses can be kept at bay. Chrome Commands take this inherent customization and go a step further, allowing you to mass edit settings, lists and caches on the browser, and access features you might not otherwise know about. We’ve listed the five Chrome Commands we’ve found most useful below, and encourage you to play around with them to make your Google Chrome browsing experience better for you, personally. Read on below to learn how to customize your web browser right now.
Extensions can give you tons of options
We just talked about extensions above — Google Chrome has some wonderful plugins and extensions available for download, many of which can improve your user experience. There are so many options for these, in fact, you might find it difficult to remember which extensions you already have, or particularly like to use, over time.
By putting the Chrome Command chrome://extensions into your address bar, you can access an entire list of the extensions you currently have installed in your Google Chrome browser. This shows the name, version number and icon of each extension, as well as how much space it’s taking up on your computer. You can turn the extensions on or off via the switch on the far right of the extensions’ boxes, and decide if they go or stay on while you’re in Incognito Mode by clicking on “Details,” and turning that on or off. Also within the chrome://extensions Chrome Command, you can see the permissions for each of your extensions by clicking the “Details” button in the extension’s box. This means you can see what data each extension actually accesses, and from there decide how often you want to keep the extension on and operating. You can also remove extensions from this Chrome Command, particularly if the access of the extension makes you uncomfortable. Just click the “Remove” button underneath the logo in the extension’s box. 4 browser extensions to speed you up
Take charge of your autofill settings
If you get sick of filling out webforms every time you shop online, or sign up for new accounts, Autofill can be your new best friend. Autofill is a feature in browsers that stores personal information about you, like your address and phone number, and offers to automatically fill that information in when you encounter relevant boxes to fill in on websites. Autofill also works for passwords and usernames, putting them in on your behalf when you come to a webpage you’ve been to before.
Through the Chrome Command chrome://settings/autofill, you can access and edit the information that Autofill applies to webforms as much as you want. You can have multiple addresses saved for quick adds to a variety of people or locations. In terms of passwords, you can make Chrome forget ones you don’t want saved anymore, or you can see what your passwords are by clicking on the eyeball icon next to them, and inputting your admin password for your computer to view the information. Chrome can even save credit card information, so that can also get input quickly when you’re purchasing something online. This information can also be adjusted or deleted at any time, or you can turn off the feature all together by clicking the switch on the right side of the screen under “Payment methods” at chrome://settings/autofill. All of Autofill’s options can be disabled this way, so if you’d like to keep your information private, or you have a shared computer, you can keep Autofill out of the picture. This is all about customization, after all, and what you want from your web browser. Chrome Commands are here to make all kinds of customization possible that way.
Clear your browser data in Chrome
Since we just mentioned privacy, sometimes the fact that Chrome and other web browsers log our every webpage visit can be annoying, or even violating. Incognito Mode keeps your history (which you can access through the Chrome Command chrome://history) clear, but your cache, cookies and download history still retain some data from your browsing. Or, you might browse one day while not in Incognito Mode, and you’ll want to delete your trace on the computer.
The Chrome Command chrome://settings/clearBrowserData opens the “Clear browsing data” window, and allows you to quickly clear your Chrome browser of most saved data. You can opt to clear your cookies, but not your history, or vice versa. You can also opt to delete everything, or just one section. The “Basic” tab gives you some more common options, and “Advanced” gives you a few more, allowing you to quickly clear our your passwords and Autofill form data rather than one at a time, as with chrome://settings/autofill. Also under the “Advanced” tab, you can see just how much you have to clear out of certain areas of the browser, and check or uncheck everything you want to clear space, and to keep data to yourself. How to delete and remove cookies from Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari Within chrome://settings/clearBrowserData, you can also set the time range for these deletions. If you set the range to “Last hour,” it will delete everything from the sections you’ve selected that were saved in the past hour. If you select “Last 7 days” or “Last 4 weeks,” you’ll eliminate the data from the last week or last month of your usage of Chrome. For times you don’t need to delete everything, this range option offers maximum customization in this region. Plus, it lets you see the amount of data you have stored when you select the range of “All time” under the “Advanced” tab. That can be very illuminating for your Internet usage, and also encourages you to do these occasional purges to give your computer more space to work with. With chrome://settings/clearBrowserData as a way to do that purging, it’s easy to keep up with, so your computer speed should stay nice and strong without extra data weighing it down — and you’ll stay more private too, all thanks to an easy Chrome Command.
Check your graphics card
For those that know a few things about computers, Google Chrome offers a slew of Chrome Commands that let you see the nitty-gritty of how your computer is running. One of the best examples of this is chrome://gpu, which tells you all about your graphics card— or graphics cards, if your computer has more than one.
The Command chrome://gpu gives you a report of the status of different graphics features, and whether they are enabled, disabled, unavailable, or accelerated. The Command also lets you know if there are any problems detected in your graphics system, and workarounds that are being applied to avoid or overcome them. Bugs will often have linked explanations for what they are, so you can learn more about them, and learn more about workarounds used to treat them. This report page also lets you know what version of Chrome and your operating system you are running, as well as information about your driver, your displays, and your video acceleration. If you want to test new graphics cards, or are just curious about your computer’s performance, chrome://gpu is a great Chrome Command to play around with, and it gives you a button to copy the entire report at once so you can save it in a document elsewhere on your computer for future reference. Once you have this information, you can use your tech know-how to fix them, and customize your computer with new graphics cards.
Try some experimental features
For customization that goes a little further than the rest, chrome://flags is a Chrome Command that allows you to enable or disable experimental features in your Google Chrome browser. Want to try a new, faster way of rendering 2D canvases as you browse? You can enable that feature by putting chrome://flags into your address bar. How about seeing a new tab-loading animation, or deciding where new tabs automatically appear? The flags command controls that too.
Chrome://flags has experimental debugging features for different situations, allows you to control when and how Google Chrome generates passwords for you when you need to make new ones, and has a lot of options for rasterization adjustments and navigation tracing. Most of these are fairly technical features to mess around with, but if you know computers and coding, this could be a great Chrome Command to play around in. You have tons of customization options, and you may gain familiarity with features that will eventually become standard for the browser. The only thing is, because these features are experimental, they sometimes can be buggy, or just stop working. So long as you’re aware of this, and you’re prepared to deal with any problems, things should go just fine. Here’s how to get Google’s must-have Chrome Password Checkup tool Chrome is the preferred web browser because you can make it exactly what you want it to be, particularly through Chrome Commands. Play with our favorite Commands by inputting the above addresses into your address bar, and see if you can’t improve your web experience with just a few easy clicks.
