Chrome 75 Released with 42 safety corrections and new features

Chrome

Google released Chrome 75 on the stable desktop channel, with new features and 42 security fixes, two marked with high severity.

Users of the Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops may update Chrome 75.0.3770.80 by going to Settings-> Help > About Google Chrome and the browser will automatically check for a new update and when available, install it.

Google Chrome 75 update

Google Chrome 75

Google Chrome 75.0.3770.80 features a number of new features, one of which is an experimental reading mode flag, allowing users to view Web pages in simplified mode by customizing and controlled the Chrome > Distill page.

This new flag is available to all the desktop platforms (i.e., Windows, macOS, Linux and Chrome OS), with the default option disabled but with chrome:/flags/#enable reader mode easy to switch to.

Reader Mode flag file

The ‘ Distill page ‘ is added to the browser’s main settings menu so that the reader mode is easier to enable when the Reader Mode flag is turned on.

New Google Chrome reader mode will enable users to remove all unnecessary confusion from web pages and bring the important content — title, text and images — to make articles easier to read.

 

Distill page

Distill page

Chrome 75 also adds lazy loading images and frames to experimental flags that will postpone loading both images and cross-origin frames until the page scrolls close to them.

The new flags are now available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Chrome OS, and Android Chrome, with default options but easy to switch to chrome: //flags/#enable-lazy-image-loading and chrome://flags/#enable-lazy-frame-loading.

Lazy

Lazy loading flag

Out of 42 security fixes that Chrome 75.0.3770.80, the rest were identified and contributed by internal audits, including AddressSanitizer, MemorySanitizer, UndefaultedBehaviorSanitizer, Control Flow Integrity, libFuzzer, or AFL, 13 were reported by external researches, and other initiatives.

The two high security corrections tracked as CVE-2019-5828 and CVE-2019-5829 patch a free ServiceWorkers vulnerability and a free Download Manager usage.

Google Chrome 75 also offers a short list of new developer-focused features:

  • There is a new way of reducing latency on canvas.
  • Web apps can now use the system-level share sheet to share files with other installed apps.
  • Now, numeric literals enable underscores to make them more readable as separators.

Google has also published a list of additional DevTools:

A complete list of all changes to this release can be found in the changelog for Chrome 75.

Mark Funk
Mark Funk is an experienced information security specialist who works with enterprises to mature and improve their enterprise security programs. Previously, he worked as a security news reporter.