Google is pushing a few interesting changes in the latest Chrome Beta for Android, including one that will make a lot of users happy: background playback of media files.
Chrome 54 Beta, now available in the Play Store, allows you to start playing a video on any website, switch to a different app or to the home screen, and have the video continue playing in the background.
Chrome 54 for Android is now being rolled out but as is usually the case with fresh updates to Google's applications, some regions will have access to the new features sooner than others. On your Android phone, open the Chrome app. To the right, tap Switch tabs. You'll see your open Chrome tabs. At the top right of the tab you want to close, tap Close. You can also swipe to close the tab. Chrome 54 Beta also includes a few new features for web developers, including the ability to make the various Chrome tabs talk to each other. Chrome tabs are normally sandboxed, for security. Chrome for Android has been updated to version 54. The upcoming release of Chrome 55 is likely to contain some major enhancements and features but 54 has brought a few new tricks as well. Works on Chrome 41+ on Windows, Mac, Chrome OS and Linux. Even though it's a developer preview, it's likely to evolve quickly as Google is developing it. Since Google is also behind Android, it makes sense to use a more official way of running APK. If they don't work, you may check with the developer so it may eventually work.
The most obvious use for this is listening to music on YouTube in the background, without having to pause the video every time you need to check your Facebook updates. This functionality is not available in the YouTube Android app, but the mobile web version is good enough to warrant the occasional switch.
The process is not seamless unfortunately. When you switch away from Chrome, playback stops and you need to tap on the 'play' button in the persistent notification to resume it. And you have to do this every time you switch back and from Chrome.
The good news is you can fire up a YouTube playlist, put Chrome in the background, and the videos in the list will play automatically. That makes it easy to create a nice list of your favorite tracks and listen to it in the background on your commute, for instance.
There's a caveat. As Android Police's Corbin Davenport notes, websites can use an API in Chrome 54 to disable this functionality. Let's just hope they won't.
Another big user-facing change is the recommended content that is now accessible with a swipe from the bottom of the Chrome homescreen. You get a list of recent bookmarks as well as a section dubbed 'Articles for you,' which includes stories that Google thinks might interest you. For me, the selection was heavily skewed towards technology, but the interesting thing is that the recommendations are different from the ones in Google Now. We have to wonder why Google is duplicating functionality here, though the company is known for this kind of inconsistencies.
Chrome 54 Beta also includes a few new features for web developers, including the ability to make the various Chrome tabs talk to each other. Chrome tabs are normally sandboxed, for security and efficiency reasons, but the addition of this feature would presumably give developers more control over the user experience. Another feature is 'Custom elements,' which let developers create their own custom HTML tags.
Bar any unforeseen issues, the features available now in Chrome 54 Beta should roll out to the stable channel of Chrome in around six weeks.
To try Chrome Beta (a separate app from Chrome stable), get in from the Play Store below.
What do you think of these features?
A browser's user agent string (UA) helps identify which browser is being used, what version, and on which operating system. When feature detection APIs are not available, use the UA to customize behavior or content to specific browser versions.
Like all other browsers, Chrome for Android sends this information in the User-Agent HTTP header every time it makes a request to any site. It's also available in the client through JavaScript using the navigator.userAgent call.
Chrome for Android #
Chrome for Android reports its UA in the following formats, depending on whether the device is a phone or a tablet.
Phone UA:
The most fastest browser. Tablet UA:
Here's an example of the Chrome user agent string on a Galaxy Nexus:
If you are parsing user agent strings using regular expressions, the following can be used to check against Chrome on Android phones and tablets:
- Phone pattern:
'Android' + 'Chrome/[.0-9]* Mobile' - Tablet pattern:
'Android' + 'Chrome/[.0-9]* (?!Mobile)'
Chrome for iOS #
Chrome 54 Android Download
The UA in Chrome for iOS is the same as the Mobile Safari user agent, with CriOS/ instead of Version/.
Here's an example of the Chrome UA on iPhone:
For comparison, the Mobile Safari UA:
Up to Chrome 84, when the Request Desktop Site feature is enabled, the Desktop Safari UA is sent:
Starting from Chrome 85, when the Request Desktop Site feature is enabled, the UA is the same as the Desktop Safari UA with CriOS/ being added:
Chrome 64 Android
WebView on Android #
The Android 4.4 (KitKat) Chromium-based WebView adds Chrome/_version_ to the user agent string.
Old WebView UA:
WebView UA in KitKat to Lollipop
If you're attempting to differentiate between the WebView and Chrome for Android, you should look for the presence of the Version/_X.X_ string in the WebView user-agent string. Don't rely on the specific Chrome version number (for example, 30.0.0.0) as the version numbers changes with each release.
WebView UA in Lollipop and Above
In the newer versions of WebView, you can differentiate the WebView by looking for the wv field as highlighted below.
