[Software Update] Google Chrome 126 Early Stable and 125 Stable Released, Here is What’s New and Fixed (2024)

- Last updated on June 7, 2024by VG

UPDATE: Google Chrome 126.0 (early stable) and 125.0 (stable) versions are available for download.

Good news for Google Chrome users! Google Chrome team has released Chrome 126.0 version to Early Stable channel and 125.0 version to Stable channel for Windows, Linux and Mac.

NOTE: Early Stable builds are provided to a small percentage of Chrome users. Google automatically selects a few Chrome users and provides Early Stable builds to them. Remaining Chrome users receive the same stable build one week later.

More Info: What is Early Stable Version of Google Chrome? How to Get It?

The latest Chrome version includes new features, several security fixes, bug fixes and improvements to stability and performance.

What’s New in Google Chrome 126.0 Early Stable Version

The new version of Chrome comes with following changes and enhancements:

• AI-Powered Optical Character Recognition (OCR) PDF Screen Reader: A built-in PDF screen reader for inaccessible documents that allows extracting text from PDFs for screen reader users. This feature leverages Google’s OCR models to extract, compartmentalize, and section PDF documents to make them more accessible. A local machine intelligence library will be added that uses Screen AI technology to analyze screenshots or the accessibility tree, and extract more information to help assistive technology, such as texts (OCR) and main content of the page.
• Search with Google Lens: Users will be able to search any images or text they see on their screen with Google Lens. To use this feature, go to a website and click Search with Google Lens on the on-focus omnibox chip, on the right-click menus, or on the 3-dot menu. Users can click, highlight, or drag anywhere on the screen to search its contents, and refine their search by adding keywords or questions to the search box. Admins can control the feature through a policy called LensOverlaySettings. To perform the search, a screenshot of the screen is sent to Google servers but it is not linked to any IDs or accounts, it is not viewed by any human, and data about its contents is not logged.
• New Policy to Set Memory Saver Mode Aggressiveness: MemorySaverModeSavings policy can be used to configure how aggressive the Memory Saver mode is when deciding to deactivate tabs to free up memory. Users can set its value to 0, 1 or 2 to set moderate, balanced and maximum memory saving respectively.
• New Out of Process IFrame (OOPIF) PDF Viewer: Some Chrome users will get an out-of-process iframe (OOPIF) architecture for the PDF viewer which is simpler and makes adding new features easier. Users can use PdfViewerOutOfProcessIframeEnabled policy to revert to using the original PDF viewer architecture.
• Reactive Prefetch on Desktop: This feature enables prefetching of sub-resources during a website navigation, to speed up navigation and load new pages faster. The sub-resources prefetched are predicted by a Google-owned service, and the browser shares the URL of pages being navigated to with this service, to retrieve predictions. You can control this feature using the UrlKeyedAnonymizedDataCollectionEnabled policy.
• Removal of UserAgentClientHintsGREASEUpdateEnabled policy
• Security fixes
• Bug fixes and improvements
• New group policies implemented

What’s New in Google Chrome 125.0 Stable Version

The new version of Chrome comes with following changes and enhancements:

• New Visual Refresh UI: Newer versions of Chrome come with an updated theme or UI based on Google Material 3 design. (How-to Enable/Disable New UI Guide)
• Changes to Chrome Updater Tool: Google is rolling out a new version of Google Update. The location for GoogleUpdate.exe on Windows has changed and has been renamed to updater.exe. Note that the previous path continues to persist until the transition is fully completed. GoogleUpdate.exe is also modified to point to updater.exe. Previous name and location of the tool was C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe. The new name and location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\GoogleUpdater\Version_Number\updater.exe. (More Info) (How-to Disable Guide)
• Automatic Deep File Scanning for Enhanced Safe Browsing Users: Starting in Chrome 125, deep scanning is performed automatically as part of the improved protections offered by Enhanced Safe Browsing. Users can disable this feature with the SafeBrowsingDeepScanningEnabled policy. (How-to Disable Guide)
• Chrome Desktop support for Windows ARM64: Chrome is rolling out support for Windows ARM64 and working on publishing the Enterprise installers. Users can test the version using Canary and Beta channels.
• Chrome Security Insights: If you have Chrome Enterprise Core (Chrome Browser Cloud Management) and Workspace Enterprise Standard or Workspace Enterprise Plus with assigned licenses, you can now enable Chrome Security Insights. This tool allows you to monitor insider risk and data loss for Chrome activity.
• Chrome Bandwidth Updates: Chrome is introducing a new mechanism for updating certain Chrome components that might result in extra bandwidth used. You can control this with the GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings policy. (How-to Enable/Disable AI Features)
• Extensions Safety Check: The Extensions Safety Check notifies users about extensions that might contain malware, policy violations, and extensions that have been unpublished long ago. It provides an interface for users to review these extensions and decide to keep or remove each flagged extension. There are two new extension types that Chrome now flags for the user to review: extensions that are not installed from the Chrome Web Store and extensions that violate store policy by using deceptive installation tactics and are considered unwanted software. During rollout, the two new triggers will be added to the extension safety check found on the chrome://extensions/ page.
• Send Download Reports without Explicit User Decision: The Client Safe Browsing Report is a telemetry report sent to Safe Browsing when a warning is shown in Chrome. Today, download reports are sent when users discard or bypass a download warning. Based on the learnings from the initial tailored warning experiment, many download warnings are not explicitly discarded or bypassed. Reports are not sent for these warnings, so Safe Browsing doesn’t have visibility on the effectiveness of these warnings. This feature aims to close this telemetry gap by sending reports when the download is auto-discarded or the browser is closed.
• UI Automation Accessibility Framework Provider on Windows: Starting in Chrome 126, Chrome will start directly supporting accessibility client software that uses Microsoft Windows’s UI Automation accessibility framework. Prior to this change, such software interoperated with Chrome by way of a compatibility shim in Microsoft Windows. This change is being made to improve the accessible user experience for many users. It provides complete support for Narrator, Magnifier, and Voice Access; and will improve third-party apps that use Windows’s UI Automation accessibility framework. Users of Chrome will find reduced memory usage and processing overhead when used with accessibility tools. It will also ease development of software using assistive technologies. Starting in Chrome 125, administrators can use the UiAutomationProviderEnabled enterprise policy to either force-enable the new provider (so that all users receive the new functionality), or disable the new provider. This policy will be supported through Chrome 136, and will be removed in Chrome 137. This one-year period is intended to give enterprises sufficient time to work with third-party vendors so that they may fix any incompatibilities resulting from the switch from Microsoft’s compatibility shim to Chrome’s UI Automation provider.
• Security fixes
• Bug fixes and improvements
• New group policies implemented

NOTE: Newer versions of Chrome (110 and later) do not support Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 operating systems. (More Information)

MUST READ: Google Chrome Newer Versions Changelog Article

Download Links of Google Chrome Latest Version

You can download the new Chrome version using following links:

NOTE: This article is updated whenever a new version of Google Chrome web browser is released. So keep checking this page regularly.

Useful Tips-n-Tricks for Google Chrome Users

• Side Panel Navigation: The side panel icon has been removed in favor of toolbar pinning. Users can open most side panel features through the Chrome 3-dots menu. (How-to Show/Hide Side Panel Button)
• Chrome now warns on insecure downloads: Chrome will start showing warnings on files which were downloaded over an insecure (not HTTPS) connection. These warnings do not prevent downloading and can be bypassed by the user. You can test the experience via chrome://flags/#insecure-download-warnings. Users can also disable warnings for sites that can not deliver files securely by adding the downloading site to InsecureContentAllowedForUrls. (How-to Enable/Disable Guide)
• Price tracking: When user bookmarks a price-trackable product, price tracking will be enabled by default when available. User will be able to disable price tracking per item and can also disable the feature entirely with the ShoppingListEnabled policy. (How-to Disable Guide)
• Google Search Side Panel: This feature allows users to show right-click search results page inside Chrome’s Side Panel without leaving the current webpage. You can control access to the Search side panel using the GoogleSearchSidePanelEnabled policy. (How-to Disable Guide)
• Updated UI for Bookmarks side panel including features such as filtering, sorting, and editing. (How-to Enable/Disable Guide)
• New Journeys option added to Side Panel (How-to Disable/Remove Guide)
• Lens image search enabled in Google search box on New Tab Page: Users will see a new Camera icon added in the search box on New tab page. This feature allows users to search by image, by uploading a file from their computer or entering an image URL. This feature will not show in Incognito, Guest User, or non-Google new tab pages. A policy LensDesktopNTPSearchEnabled can be used to control this feature. (How-to Enable/Disable Guide)
• New Memory Saver and Battery Saver modes added to improve performance and extend battery life. You can control these features using Settings > Performance page. New enterprise policies TabDiscardingExceptions, BatterySaverModeAvailability and HighEfficiencyModeEnabled can be used to customize these new features. (How-to Enable/Disable Guide)
• Users can now save a customized note for each saved credential in the Password Manager. (How-to Enable/Disable Guide)
• New redesigned user experience for browser downloads: The existing downloads shelf or panel has been replaced with a dedicated downloads bubble in Chrome browser’s toolbar. You can control this with the DownloadBubbleEnabled policy. (How-to Enable/Disable Guide)
• You can now move Side Panel to left side in Chrome (How-to Guide)
• Chrome now allows users to search their history, bookmarks, and tabs directly in the Omnibox. Using one of the prepopulated shortcuts – @history, @bookmarks, or @tabs – users can choose to conduct a focused search limited to the area selected. (How-to Enable/Disable Guide)
• Side Search allows users to compare search results via a side panel UI to get the search results faster. This means users can view a page and the search results at the same time, without needing to navigate back and forth or losing their search results. You can control this feature using the SideSearchEnabled policy. (How-to Remove Guide)
• Tab Audio Muting: Now you can mute tabs using a single mouse click on Volume icon showing on the tab (How-to Enable Guide)
• New ForceMajorVersionToMinorPositionInUserAgent policy to freeze or set the User-Agent string major version to 99. It’ll be helpful to users who have an app that is broken in Chrome 100 due to a User-Agent parsing error. Users can set the policy to 2 and the User-Agent string will freeze the major version at 99 and includes the browser’s major version in the minor position. (More Info)
• You can now uninstall/remove Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) using Settings app or classic Control Panel in Windows similar to other native Win32 programs. (How-to Guide)
• New WebUI branding update design in Settings and other built-in pages (How-to Restore Classic UI)
• New Idle Detection API feature which can allow websites to check user’s active or idle status (How-to Disable Guide)
• New Side Panel feature to easily access bookmarks and reading list pages (How-to Enable Guide)
• Now tab hover card displays web page thumbnail preview images (How-to Disable Guide)
• New Reading List feature to organize favorite web pages in a collection and read later (How-to Enable/Disable Guide)
• New Tab Search feature to find specific tab quickly and easily (How-to Disable Guide)
• Tab Groups which allows users to create multiple and separate tab groups for desired tabs (How-to Disable Guide)
• New dedicated Extensions menu button added to Chrome toolbar to easily and quickly manage your installed extensions (How-to Remove Guide)
• New Media Controls button in toolbar to control playback of currently playing music/video (How-to Remove Guide)
• You can enable real working search box on new tab page (How-to Enable Guide)

More Information about Google Chrome Web Browser

You can get full details about all new features and changes present in Chrome in our exclusive Google Chrome Canary updates topic:

Google Chrome Canary Updates

If you don’t want to install Google Chrome in your computer but want to give it a try, you can check the portable version which doesn’t need installation:

Download Google Chrome Portable Version

NOTE: Windows XP and Windows Vista users should check following troubleshooting articles:

[Fix] Google Chrome Showing XP Style Classic Blue Titlebar in Windows Vista

[Tip] Disable “Windows XP and Vista will No Longer be Supported” Yellow Infobar

Also Check:

Fix Slow Performance Issues and Tabs Not Loading Problem in Google Chrome