7 essential Chrome browser features you should be using
by Kaitlyn Means
Chrome is the browser of choice for most internet users. It has so many features that make my work as a cloud accountant at RAI easier. Here are my favorite Chrome tips, tricks, and hacks.
Back button history
Have you ever been on a website or in a cloud app and found yourself clicking your browser back button multiple times in a row to get back to a certain page? You don’t have to do that in Chrome. Simply right-click on the browser back button and then choose the screen you want from the list that appears.
Clear cache in one click
I’ve made a mistake when filling out a form on a website and gotten an error message. Then fixed the error, resubmitted the form, and gotten the same error message again. Ugh! Has this ever happened to you? This can be caused by the error message being stuck in your browser cache. You’ve probably experienced a support call where an agent told you to clear your cache and cookies. A quicker way to do this is to hold down the shift key while clicking the browser reload button. That button looks like a circle-arrow and is found immediately to the left of the field where you type the web address. This will re-load the page from the server instead of from the cache. It will take longer, but it will usually clear up your problem.
Pin Tabs
If you have a few tabs that are your most important and you always want to find them easily, you can pin them. Find the tab you want to pin and right-click on it. Then choose “Pin tab” from the dropdown menu. Chrome will collapse the tab down to just the icon and park it on the far left of all your tabs.
Startup pages
Most of us have websites and apps that we use every day. You can choose to have certain websites and app pages load every time you start up Chrome. First, open a tab for each of the pages you want to load at startup – and close any that you don’t. Click the three dots (upper right corner of your Chrome browser window) and select Settings from the menu. On the Settings screen, scroll down to the “On Startup” section. Select the option to “Open a specific page or set of pages” then click “Use current pages”. The tabs you have open will be added to the list. You can add or delete to this list in the future.
Reopen closed tab
I admit it, I’m a tab hoarder. I frequently have so many tabs open. They are each so small that it’s easy to accidentally close one when I’m trying to select it instead. Chrome has a feature for people like me (and I know I’m not alone) called “Reopen closed tab.” To get to the most recently closed tab, right-click on the tabs bar over to the right of the last open tab. Choose “Reopen Closed Tab”. You can also click on the three dots in the upper right corner, choose History and then see a list of recently closed tabs.
Extensions
How I love my Chrome Extensions! There are over 180,000 extensions on the Chrome Web Store and while I would never need (or want) the vast majority of them, a few of them are life-changing. Extensions are found in the tab bar to the right of your open browser tabs. They are buttons you click on that do great things. What are my favorites? Grammarly, which goes beyond spellcheck to catch embarrassing typos before I share content or send an email. Print Friendly & PDF, which allows me to print (as a PDF, of course) and save a decent version of a webpage. My Zoom extension which allows me to add a Zoom meeting to any Google Calendar event. And of course, my password keeper extension, which keeps track of my thousands of different usernames and passwords. What are your favorite extensions?
Chrome People
Chrome allows you to create different profiles on your computer (called People) each with its own settings for bookmarks, extensions, autofill info, startup tabs, privacy, etc. These are each independent instances of the Chrome browser. If you associate a profile with a Google login, you can sync all those settings across all your devices.
Chrome markets this feature as a way for different people to share the same computer. However, since anyone who has access to your computer would be able to access any of your People with the browsing history, saved passwords and other possibly sensitive data, it might not be ideal for that. I feel it’s more useful for those of us who have a few different ‘people’ sharing the same body. I have a Chrome person for Work Me, Home Me, QBO Me, and App Testing Me. I can stay logged into all of those at the same time, easily switching back and forth as needed. Even better, if some of my different personalities have accounts with the same apps, I can stay logged into those accounts in each of my separate People. Here’s how.
