The Google Chrome browser on desktop platforms is getting three more productivity upgrades. Thankfully, it's a break from the usual AI-powered enhancements.
First, Chrome is getting a split view mode, allowing you to have two web pages open at the same time in a shared window. It splits a browser tab into two panels, as an alternative to placing Chrome windows together with your operating system's window snapping. When the feature is active, a new menu in the toolbar allows you to swap the panels or move them to separate tabs.
Google said in a blog post, "Our work with early testers has shown that split view is already helping people multi-task and get more done on the web. One teacher told us they use split view to more easily grade papers in the classroom, others love using it to take notes on YouTube videos, and developers are even using it to reference documentation while they code."
Microsoft Edge has offered a split screen mode for a while, and Vivaldi's Tab Tiling can create multiple page views in a grid with no maximum limit. Mozilla is also testing a similar feature for Firefox.
I've tried the split screen feature in Edge a few times, but it was always more steps than just snapping two windows together and dragging tabs between them as needed. Google's implementation works about the same, but with a few options missing, like the ability to open links from one panel in the other panel.
Next, Chrome's PDF viewer is adding the ability to highlight text and add notes to a document. Again, this is something that Microsoft Edge and Firefox already supported, but it's great to see it come to Chrome as well. If you have Chrome as your usual web browser, you won't need to switch applications anymore just to sign a form.
Finally, you can now save PDFs directly to Google Drive, even if you don't have the Drive desktop client set up on your computer. The PDF viewer now has a Google Drive button at the top-right corner, and clicking it allows you to save the current document to a 'Saved from Chrome' folder in your Drive. Handy.
These features are rolling out now to the Chrome browser. Google didn't mention if a specific Chrome version is required—the wide rollout for Chrome 145 started on February 10, and Chrome 146 isn't due for its full release until March 10. The PDF markup tools are working for me on Chrome 145, but not the other functionality.
Source: Google
