Google updates Chrome on desktop with proactive Safety Check

Google is launching a few updates to Chrome on desktop this week to make your browsing experience safer and give you more control over your browser’s memory usage.

The marquee feature for this update is proactive Safety Check. Starting with version 120, which actually launched a few weeks ago, Chrome’s Safety Check on desktop will now run in the background and send out proactive alerts when it detects if a password in Chrome has been compromised or when an extension you’ve installed is malware. It’ll also remind you to update Chrome.

What’s maybe even more important, though, is that Chrome’s Safety Check will now automatically revoke permission you may have given to a site a long time ago but haven’t used for a while. That’s similar to how Google handles Android permissions now and can help ensure that a site you don’t use anymore doesn’t continue to get location or microphone access.

Also now: When a site that you don’t engage with much sends you a lot of notifications, Safety Check will ask if you want to disable them. Sanity restored.

Google is also highlighting two other updates to Chrome on desktop today. The first is an update to Chrome’s Memory Saver mode, which now features more information when you hover over a tab and a new setting that makes it easier to tell Chrome that certain sites should not go to sleep.

The second is the ability to save tab groups (a browser feature that some users absolutely love and most simply ignore). This will roll out in the coming weeks. The use case here is that you can save those tab groups and then sync them with your other desktop devices to pick up where you left off.

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