Critical Chrome Update: Secure Your Browser and Unlock Hidden Features

Millions of Google Chrome users are being urged to check their settings and restart their applications immediately. The US tech giant has issued a fresh warning, rolling out a crucial update to address three high-severity flaws alongside a recent zero-day threat. However, once your system is fully secured, a treasure trove of hidden ‘Flags’ awaits, offering a dramatically improved and tailored browsing experience.

Urgent Security Patches Deployed

Chrome’s latest stable channel rollout is currently reaching users, updating Windows and Mac systems to version 145.0.7632.116/117, whilst Linux machines are receiving version 144.0.7559.116. Google has strongly advised updating without delay.

Although the three primary vulnerabilities fixed in this patch are not currently being actively exploited in the wild, they pose a severe security risk. The technical flaws involve an out-of-bounds read error in Media (CVE-2026-3061), inappropriate implementation issues (CVE-2026-3063), and an out-of-bounds memory access vulnerability in Tint (CVE-2026-3062).

This urgent notice arrives just days after Google patched a highly dangerous zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2026-2441). According to cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes, this earlier high-risk flaw involved a memory corruption issue within Chrome’s font processing capabilities, which hackers were already actively exploiting to execute dangerous code without the user’s knowledge.

Securing your machine is remarkably straightforward. Simply click the three-dot menu in the top right corner of the browser, navigate to ‘Settings’, and then select ‘About Chrome’. The browser will automatically download any available updates. Crucially, you must restart the application to finalise the installation and protect your system.

Looking Under the Hood: Chrome Flags

Once your browser is safely updated, you might want to explore ways to turbocharge its performance. Beyond the standard settings menu, Chrome harbours a hidden directory of experimental features known as Flags.

Accessing them requires a bit of caution. Because these are test functions that may never reach the official stable release, occasional bugs and hiccups are entirely expected. Nevertheless, for those willing to experiment, the payoff is often a noticeably faster and more intuitive web experience. By typing the relevant search terms into the Chrome Flags search bar, you can fundamentally alter how the browser behaves.

Please note, the following features were tested on a custom PC running Windows 11 and an earlier Chrome build (version 140.0.7339.186), but they apply across various operating systems.

Turbocharging Performance

If you ever notice your scrolling becoming sluggish or stuttering, enabling the Smooth Scrolling flag will likely resolve the issue. Whilst it is an excellent tweak for Android users, it works wonders across Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS platforms alike.

Waiting for bulky files to download can be incredibly tedious. You can significantly cut down these delays by searching for Parallel Downloading. Once enabled from the drop-down menu, this feature divides large downloads into multiple smaller files, processing them simultaneously.

Further under-the-hood tweaks can genuinely accelerate your web traffic. Enabling Google’s own QUIC Protocol speeds up page loads, provided the website in question has been optimised for it. For a more aggressive approach, those with a dedicated graphics card can enable GPU rasterization alongside the Zero-copy rasterizer. This effectively offloads heavy lifting from your CPU directly to the GPU for tile management. You can even force the browser to use hardware acceleration by enabling the Override software rendering list flag. Whilst these graphics tweaks theoretically make Chrome noticeably faster, they can occasionally make the browser more prone to crashing, so they are best used on a trial basis.

Interface and Usability Upgrades

Many modern convertible laptops and Windows tablets boast highly capable touch screens, yet Chrome’s default desktop interface can sometimes feel fiddly when swiping and tapping. By searching for Touch UI Layout and enabling it, the browser adopts a far more natural, touch-optimised interface.

Aesthetics and eye comfort are equally important. Whilst dark mode is incredibly popular, not all websites play along. The Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents flag simply forces stubbornly bright web pages to adopt a darker, more comfortable colour palette.

For the tab hoarders amongst us, managing the browser can quickly become a nightmare. Opening too many pages results in a cluttered row of microscopic, unrecognisable tabs. The interface simply wasn’t designed for such heavy loads. Thankfully, enabling Tab Scrolling keeps your tabs at a readable size and allows you to physically scroll through the entire list, restoring a bit of much-needed order to your workspace.

Streamlining Online Forms

Nobody enjoys the sheer monotony of filling out online forms. Google already simplifies this with autofill, but you can make it even smarter. Turning on the Show autofill predictions flag ensures Chrome automatically populates text fields before you even start typing.

Furthermore, if you frequently use ‘buy now, pay later’ services, you have likely noticed that your financial details rarely fill in automatically. To address this, Google’s development team has introduced specific autofill flags, including ones tailored for services like Klarna. Simply search for buy now pay later in the Flags menu. Whilst it won’t work on absolutely every website just yet, it is a massive step in the right direction for frequent shoppers.