Sharing specific highlights from web pages and tab search now awesome in Chrome

There is a fresh update to the Google Chrome browser and this is one you might want to get sooner rather than later. I understand the reluctance to update, we have lost features to updates before but in this case we gain a few good ones.

Do not panic if the update is not yet available for you, the rollout of these features has taken longer than normal. It will come in due time.

Better sharing of specific passages within a web page

Sometimes you read an article that you think a companion would find interesting. The instinct is to share the link and that’s how friendships are maintained. At least I think that’s how friendships work. You share the link and your friend loads it up and scrolls through the whole thing.

However, sometimes it is not the whole article you want them to read. Sometimes you want to draw attention to a specific paragraph or sentence. This might be to give context to a going-on-three-months argument. While you want them to read the whole thing, you also want them to know what your main takeaway from the article was from the get-go.

For long articles of the educational kind, that saves a lot of time. Your friend is directed to the highlighted passage within the article.

Why not just copy the paragraph and send that like we used to? That kind of sharing robs people of the context within which something was typed. It’s a great recipe for misinformation spreading through the taking of passages out of context. The Christians out there know about this, where some people quote verses out of context to present their own ideologies as bible-backed.

So yeah, I think this is a pretty neat feature in the fight against misinformation. Let’s not copy a passage and send just that from now on. Let’s use the new ‘Copy link to highlight’ feature in Chrome:

1. Highlight the text you want to share.
2. Right-click and select Copy link to highlight.
3. Paste the link anywhere, like WhatsApp, an email etc.

For now the feature is only available on Chrome for desktops and not mobile. There is no word on when it might come to mobile. 

Before some even mention it, I am aware that you could enable this feature from the Flags menu. That is an experimental menu for features not yet in the stable version and not many mess around with those flags. The rollout into the stable build was supposed to start way back in April but for some reason it’s only hitting some users now.

Tab search

I’m sure there aren’t many who will find this feature useful but for those that do, it’s a game changer. I happen to be in the camp that is celebrating this. 

I open a lot of tabs. Like a lot. 

Until I’m 100% sure I’m done with one, it stays open. That’s not mentioning the ones that are never closed, WhatsApp, Pocket, Keep, Gmail and other work tabs, etc. So it adds up and so finding the right tab when you want it can be difficult. That’s because with 60 tabs open, you won’t be able to see the page title and the icons at that point are so tiny clicking on them is nigh impossible. 

I got around this by splitting the tabs into 3 windows. And by Olympic level finger dexterity in the use of Alt + Tab I was able to navigate those windows easily. 

Enter Tab Search. You hear the ding that you’ve received a new WhatsApp message? Simply click on the little downward facing arrow next to the minimise button and right on top is a search bar. You just type in the tab you’re looking for and you’re good to go. 

You can even type just one word from the title of an article you want and you’ll find it. Or you could scroll through the list of open tabs if you’ve forgotten but I think you’d remember at least one word.

May these features bring as much joy to you as they have to me.