Top 10 Google Chrome power tips

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Posted on 26 Mar 2010 at 14:08

If you haven't got Google Chrome yet, you should give the browser a try. It's incredibly fast compared to both Internet Explorer and Firefox, even on a slow PC or netbook. Thanks to its clever architecture, each tab can be run as its own process, so a web page crashing in one won't bring down your entire browser. Google has even recently updated Chrome so that you extend its features with extensions. These perform a range of features from letting you check your Google Mail quickly to providing a built-in translation service.

We won't cover extensions here, but we will show you how to get more out of your browser with its default tools. Here are our top 10 power tips.

10. The new tab page

To open a new Tab in Chrome and access the New Tab page, you can either click the '+' button at the top of the page or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-T.

On a first glance this page just seems to show thumbnails of the sites that you visit the most, plus a list of recently-visited websites. However, it's completely customisable.

Thumbnails can be dragged around the page, allowing you to put them in the order that you'd want them. The list of websites displayed depending on which ones you view the most, but you can pin the ones you use the most to the New Tab page. Simply, hover your mouse over the thumbnail you want to keep, until the bar appears at the top, then click the pin icon; you can click the 'X' to remove the thumbnail completely.

9. Incognito browsing

If you want to visit some websites, but don't want the browser or your computer to record any details of it, you need Chrome's Incognito mode. Simply press CTRL-SHIFT-N or select New incognito window from the Tools menu (it's shaped like a spanner).

This will pop up a new browser window, which has a silhouette of a spy in the top-left. Anything you do in this window, including opening new tabs, will not be recorded by your computer or your browser. In fact, the only traces it will leave behind are files that you download or bookmarks that you create.

Only tabs in this window operate this way; the main Chrome window operates as normal. This mode also doesn't affect the way that websites operate and doesn't mean that you're surfing the internet anonymously.

Download the latest version of Google Chrome here