Chrome 136

Stable release date: April 29th, 2025

Unless otherwise noted, the following changes apply to Chrome 136 stable channel release for Android, ChromeOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows.

HTML and DOM

Language support for CanvasTextDrawingStyles

The <canvas> DOM element, like all DOM elements, accepts a lang attribute that is used to define language specific treatment for font selection (when fonts have locale specific glyphs). Browsers respect this attribute. However, when an OffscreenCanvas is created there is no way to set locale information, possibly resulting in a state where an offscreen canvas produces rendered results that differ from the canvas in which its output is used. This feature adds a lang IDL attribute to CanvasTextDrawingStyles to give developers direct control over the language for the text drawing and metrics.

Tracking bug #385006131 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

CSS and UI

The dynamic-range-limit property

Enables a page to limit the maximum brightness of HDR content.

Tracking bug #1470298 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

To eliminate user browsing history leaks, anchor elements are styled as :visited only if they have been clicked from this top-level site and frame origin before.

There is an exception for "self-links", where links to a site's own pages can be styled as :visited even if they have not been clicked on in this exact top-level site and frame origin before. This exemption is only enabled in top-level frames or subframes which are same-origin with the top-level frame. The privacy benefits are still achieved because sites already know which of its subpages a user has visited, so no new information is exposed. This was a community-requested exception which improves user experience.

Tracking bug #1448609 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Unprefixed print-color-adjust

The print-color-adjust property lets you adjust colors in printed web pages. This is the same as Chrome's already-supported -webkit-print-color-adjust, but with a standardized name.

The -webkit- prefixed version is not removed.

MDN Docs | Tracking bug #376381169 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Rename string attr() type to raw-string

The CSS Working Group has resolved to replace string attr() type with raw-string.

Therefore from Chrome 136 attr(data-foo string) becomes attr(data-foo raw-string).

Tracking bug #400981738 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Type-agnostic var() fallback

The fallback part of a var() function does not validate against the type of the custom property being referenced.

Tracking bug #372475301 | ChromeStatus.com entry

Web APIs

Dispatch click events to captured pointer

If a pointer is captured while the pointerup event is being dispatched, the click event is now dispatched to the captured target instead of the nearest common ancestor of pointerdown and pointerup events as per the UI Event spec.

For uncaptured pointers, the click target remains unchanged.

Tracking bug #40851596 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Explicit compile hints with magic comments

Allows attaching of information about which functions should be eager parsed and compiled in JavaScript files.

The information is encoded as magic comments.

Tracking bug #13917 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Incorporate navigation initiator into the HTTP cache partition key

Chrome's HTTP cache keying scheme is updated to include an is-cross-site-main-frame-navigation boolean to mitigate cross-site leak attacks involving top-level navigation.

Specifically, this will prevent cross-site attacks in which an attacker can initiate a top-level navigation to a given page and then navigate to a resource known to be loaded by the page in order to infer sensitive information using load timing. This change also improves privacy by preventing a malicious site from using navigations to infer whether a user has visited a given site previously.

Tracking bug #398784714 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Protected audience: text conversion helpers

Protected Audience bidding and scoring scripts that interface with WebAssembly need to efficiently convert string-typed data to (and from) byte arrays (for example, to pass strings into and out of WebAssembly with the "memory" ArrayBuffer). This provides two standalone functions, protectedAudience.encodeUtf8, and protectedAudience.decodeUtf8 to perform these tasks about an order of magnitude more efficiently than doing it in JavaScript.

ChromeStatus.com entry

RegExp.escape

RegExp.escape is a static method that takes a string and returns an escaped version that may be used as a pattern inside a regular expression.

For example:

const str = prompt("Please enter a string");
const escaped = RegExp.escape(str);
const re = new RegExp(escaped, 'g'); // handles reg exp special tokens with the replacement.
console.log(ourLongText.replace(re));

ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Speculation rules: tag field

This enables developers to add tag field to speculation rules. This optional field can be used to track the source of speculation rules. For example, to treat them differently at an intermediary server. Any tags associated with a speculation will be sent with the Sec-Speculation-Tags header.

Tracking bug #381687257 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Update ProgressEvent to use double type for loaded and total

The ProgressEvent has attributes loaded and total indicating the progress, and their type is unsigned long long now.

With this feature, the type for these two attributes is changed to double instead, which gives the developer more control over the value. For example, the developers can now create a ProgressEvent with the total of 1 and the loaded increasing from 0 to 1 gradually. This is aligned with the default behavior of the <progress> HTML element if the max attribute is omitted.

ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Privacy and security

Permissions Policy reports for iframes

Introduces a new violation type called "Potential Permissions Policy violation", which will only look at Permissions Policy (including report-only policy) and the allow attribute set in iframes to detect the conflict between Permissions Policy enforced versus permissions propagated to iframes.

Tracking bug #40941424 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Reduce fingerprinting in Accept-Language header information

Reduces the amount of information the Accept-Language header value string exposes in HTTP requests and in navigator.languages. Instead of sending a full list of the user's preferred languages on every HTTP request, Chrome now sends the user's most preferred language in the Accept-Language header.

Tracking bug #1306905 | ChromeStatus.com entry

Identity

FedCM updates

Allows FedCM to show multiple identity providers in the same dialog, by having all providers in the same get() call. This provides developers with a convenient way to present all supported identity providers to users.

Chrome 136 also removes support for add another account in FedCM passive mode. This feature allows showing a use another account button alongside other IdP accounts in the chooser. The feature is currently unused, and UX conversations have led us to believe that supporting this leads to a more complicated flow without much benefit. This feature will still work in FedCM active mode.

Tracking bug #1348262 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Web authentication conditional create (passkey upgrades)

WebAuthn conditional create requests let websites upgrade existing password credentials to a passkey.

Tracking bug #377758786 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Images and media

AudioContext Interrupted State

Adds an "interrupted" state to AudioContextState. This new state lets the User Agent pause playback during exclusive audio access (VoIP) or when a laptop lid is closed.

Tracking bug #374805121 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Captured surface control

A Web API that lets web applications:

  1. Forward wheel events to a captured tab.
  2. Read and change the zoom level of a captured tab.

Tracking bug #1466247 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

CapturedSurfaceResolution

Expose pixel ratio of the captured surface while screensharing.

This feature helps applications to conserve their system resources or adapt the quality over bandwidth trade-off according to the physical and logical resolutions of the captured surface.

Tracking bug #383946052 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

H265 (HEVC) codec support in WebRTC

After this change, HEVC will join VP8, H.264, VP9, and AV1 as supported codecs in WebRTC. Support will be queryable using the MediaCapabilities API.

Tracking bug #391903235 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

H26x Codec support updates for MediaRecorder

Chromium's MediaRecorder API now supports HEVC encoding, introducing the hvc1.* codec string, and adds new codecs (hev1.* and avc3.*) supporting variable resolution video in MP4.

Support for HEVC platform encoding was added in WebCodecs in Chromium M130. As a follow-up, support has been added to the MediaRecorder API in Chromium. The API now supports both MP4 and Matroska muxer types with different HEVC and H.264 mime type specifications. HEVC encoding is only supported if the user's device and operating system provide the necessary capabilities.

ChromeStatus.com entry

Use DOMPointInit for getCharNumAtPosition, isPointInFill, isPointInStroke

This change brings Chromium code in line with the latest W3C specification for SVGGeometryElement and SVGPathElement in terms of use of DOMPointInit over SVGPoint for getCharNumAtPosition, isPointInFill, isPointInStroke.

Tracking bug #40572887 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

WebGPU: GPUAdapterInfo isFallbackAdapter attribute

The GPUAdapterInfo isFallbackAdapter boolean attribute indicates if an adapter has significant performance limitations in return for wider compatibility, more predictable behavior, or improved privacy. Note that a fallback adapter may not be present on all systems.

Tracking bug #403172841 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Browser changes

Fluent scrollbars

This feature modernizes the Chromium scrollbars (both overlay and non-overlay) on Windows and Linux to fit the Windows 11 Fluent design language.

Non-overlay Fluent scrollbars will be enabled by default in Linux and Windows. This change applies to Linux as well because Chromium's Linux scrollbar design has historically been aligned with what ships on Windows. How to expose enabling overlay Fluent scrollbars is still being decided.

Tracking bug #1292117 | ChromeStatus.com entry

Origin trials

Audio Output Devices API: setDefaultSinkId()

This feature adds setDefaultSinkId() to MediaDevices, which enables the top-level frame to change the default audio output device used by its subframes.

Origin Trial | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Enable web applications to understand bimodal performance timings

Web applications may suffer from bimodal distribution in page load performance, due to factors outside of the web application's control. For example:

  • When a user agent first launches (a "cold start" scenario), it must perform many expensive initialization tasks that compete for resources on the system.
  • Browser extensions can affect the performance of a website. For instance, some extensions run additional code on every page you visit, which can increase CPU usage and result in slower response times.
  • When a machine is busy performing intensive tasks, it can lead to slower loading of web pages.

A new confidence field on the PerformanceNavigationTiming object will enable developers to discern if the navigation timings are representative for their web application.

Origin Trial | Tracking bug #1413848 | ChromeStatus.com entry | Spec

Update of Canvas text rendering implementation

This is not a web-exposed change.

The implementation of CanvasRenderingContext2D measureText(), fillText(), and strokeText() has a drastic change. This might affect performance, so we'd like to run an origin trial so canvas-heavy applications can try out the new implementation.

Origin Trial | Tracking bug #389726691 | ChromeStatus.com entry

Deprecations and removals

Remove HTMLFencedFrameElement.canLoadOpaqueURL()

The HTMLFencedFrameElement method canLoadOpaqueURL() was replaced with navigator.canLoadAdAuctionFencedFrame() in 2023, and calling it has resulted in a deprecation console warning ever since pointing to the new API. The method is removed from Chrome 136.

ChromeStatus.com entry