Chrome "Flags" options to be activated to use the most useful experimental functions

Chrome is certainly the most used Internet browser in the world, but having become a gigantic program with several internal features and to be added through extensions, it can also become heavy and slow.
To deal with the problem of heaviness, clutter of memory and abuse of resources that can cause many problems on slower and older PCs, Google tries to optimize its browser with each update, even with so-called experimental functions, which remain hidden.
Called Flags, it deals with options still in the testing phase, which can be discarded in the future or promoted and integrated in the next versions of Google Chrome. In some cases, change Chrome Flags it can improve performance, load faster sites or change the browser interface significantly.
Not having been tested sufficiently on each system, the activation of these Flags can also have the opposite effect and cause problems of instability or slowerness. Try them, however, it costs nothing, also because you can always go back without side effects and without losing the personalized settings.READ ALSO: How to speed up Google Chrome

These experimental options are found, on Chrome for Windows PC, Mac and also on Chrome for Android, by opening a new tab at chrome: // flags. Below we see some of the experimental functions or Flags tested on Chrome 78 (November 2019), which should also work in later versions (or which may disappear). To find the flags listed in this post, in the very long list of the page chrome: // flags, it is better to use the search function on the page (press the keys on the PC CTRL-F) and find the various options from the code that comes after the #. In this article, we put the complete address to copy and paste in the address bar of a new Chrome tab to go directly to the option to change. Some flags work only on some operating systems and may not work on Windows or Android (but the system on which they work is always written).
After one or more changes, to activate them, you need to press the button Restart now which appears below.

1) Group the cards into groups
Those who use surfing the internet keeping many tabs open at the same time, when even the representative icons of the sites are no longer visible, may find it difficult to distinguish what is inside them. By activating this option you will be able to enjoy the possibility of keeping the cards grouped together, distinguishable with different colors and labels.
The option to activate is chrome: // flags / # tab-groups

READ ALSO: Chrome extensions to manage tabs

2) Turn on Chrome’s article reading feature
On PC you can use the Reader function to read blog articles like this without disturbing elements and advertisements with only text and images. However, this reading mode is still an experimental function that can be activated via the option chrome: // flags / # enable-reader-mode
After restarting Chrome, with this option active, you will find a new button on the pages of How2do or other blogs and newspapers, in the address bar, which opens the article displayed in reading mode.

3) Hide extensions from the Chrome toolbar
If we have many extensions installed, they will be displayed with their icon in the upper right corner. By activating this option the extensions will be hidden in a new menu and can be used by pressing the button with the extension icon that will be next to the address bar.
The flag to activate is: chrome: // flags / # extensions-toolbar-menu

4) Force the dark mode of Chrome
As seen in another guide, you can enable dark mode on Chrome, which does nothing but show the menus and the frame of the browser colored in gray. By means of a flag, it is also possible to force the dark night mode on the loaded sites transforming the white backgrounds into dark backgrounds, with the plaintext. This modality, in truth, is not perfect and for some sites it can also make the text difficult to read. However you can try to activate it from the following option: chrome: // flags / # enable-force-dark

5) Play / Pause button for music and videos
This is a really useful flag that will probably be integrated into Chrome in future versions. It is a question of showing a new button in the Chrome toolbar, at the top right, which allows you to start or stop the playback of a video or music from sites such as Youtube or Spotify and also to see the title of the video or song that you listen to.
The Flag option to activate is chrome: // flags / # global-average-controls

6) Fluid flow
This flag allows you to enable smoother scrolling when viewing content on the Internet when scrolling up or down with the mouse and keyboard. The smoother sliding will give a softer and less jerky feeling than the default.
The flag to activate is: chrome: // flags / # smooth-scrolling

7) Speed ​​up Chrome with the QUIC protocol
This is a very effective trick (which has existed for several years and has always remained in the experimental options and is active in Opera and Chrome Canary) to have super speed on Chrome. QUIC (HTTP / 3) stands for Quick UDP Internet connections and was developed by Google in 2012 to reduce bandwidth, latency and congestion by decreasing the number of steps needed when establishing a new connection. Although it is an experimental function, it works without problems and can be activated by the flag: chrome: // flags / # enable-quic

8) Enable incognito browsing on the sites where it is blocked
Some websites block their content when using incognito mode. Thanks to this option it is possible to create a temporary filesystem in memory, it is usually disabled in incognito mode, which makes websites think of using the normal browsing mode. After closing the window, the filesystem and, therefore, any data of the site visited incognito, is deleted.
The option to activate is chrome: // flags / # enable-filesystem-in-disguise

9) Increase download speed (desktop and mobile)
Parallel downloads can help increase download speed and it works really well (in fact it is not clear why it still remains among the experimental flags). For those who download many files, this is an option to be activated by the flag: chrome: // flags / # enable-parallel-downloading

10) Unsafe sites highlighted
While some sites have a green padlock icon next to the address bar, others do not have it because they do not use the https protocol or because they do not use adequate protection. If you want to see the word “Insecure site” when opening a non-https or problem site, you can activate this option: chrome: // flags / # enable-http-mark-as

11) Upload images while browsing the site
This is another option to speed up the loading of sites on Chrome so that, when you load the site, the images contained in it are loaded only when they are displayed on the screen (scrolling down) and not all together immediately.
The option to load images in “lazy-load” mode is: chrome: // flags / # enable-image-lazy-loading

12) Share open tabs on Chromecast
For those who use the Chromecast, it is possible to share the open tabs from the PC to the TV by activating this flag: chrome: // flags / # load-average-router-component-extension

13) Quick navigation (desktop and mobile)
On laptops with touch screens, tablets and smartphones it is possible to activate gestures to go back and forth in the history of visited sites and open web pages using your finger. This will make navigation very fun and easy.
The option is chrome: // flags / # Overscroll-history-navigation

After activating all these experimental settings, press on Restart now below and check for improvements.
If there were problems, crashes or errors that were not there before, reopen the page chrome: // flags and click the button at the top right to restore default values.

READ ALSO: Hidden Chrome settings to edit