New Flag in Chrome 70 Brings Tab History With a Long Press of The Back Button

In Chrome OS and Chrome for desktop (Chrome for MacOS, Chrome for Windows, and Chrome for Linux), if you long press the back arrow while you are on a browser page, you will get your recent browsing history for that tab.  It is a handy feature.  On Android however, when you long press the back button on your phone while in Chrome you get… nothing.  You can press the button as long as you want but it will just take you back to your previous page.

That looks to be changing in Chrome 70.

A new flag has popped up in the Chrome for Android Canary app, which is based on Chrome 70, that allows you to enable the back button on your phone to display you recent tab history.

Deal – Google Pixelbook Down to $757 at Amazon ($241 Off)

There is a lot of evidence suggesting that we are about to see a Google Pixelbook 2, including a leak from the ever reliable Evan Blass.  But another indicator that we are about to see an update to the Pixelbook lineup is the current generation of the Chromebook continues to drop in price.

Right now at Amazon, Google is selling all three of the current generation configurations of the Google Pixelbook as well as the Pixelbook Pen for far less than their original prices.

If you have a Pixelbook and have been thinking about picking up the Pixelbook Pen, now’s the time for that too.  Right now it is down to $88, a savings of $10.

YouTube for Android Dark Mode Slowly Rolling Out to Everyone

After a bit of teasing and a roll out to the web, the YouTube for Android app is finally starting to get a Dark Mode.  The update is a cloud-side update which means as long as you have the latest version of the Android app on your phone, you will have the update pushed to you behind the scenes and not have to update your app.  For those that are curious, the latest build is version 13.28.54.

The YouTube team at Google appears to be slow rolling this update out so not everyone is seeing it just yet, me included.  This isn’t uncommon for these cloud-side pushes so if you aren’t seeing it yet, chances are good you will see it today or tomorrow.  You’ll know you got the update when you see a pop up in the YouTube for Android app letting you know it is available.

Google Photos Web Starting to Suggest Facial Recognition Merging

The Google Photos site is now starting to show an option to allow you to merge faces in your library.  Photos since the beginning has had facial recognition built into it and has done a reasonable job of helping you identify people in your albums and tagging them.  The challenge with it has come with age progression of children and photos of peoples at odd angles.  It seems that the Photos team have be doing a bit of work on the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms on the feature.

On the Google Photos site, if you go to the Albums tab and click on People & Pets album, you will see a banner at the top of the page with suggestions of faces to merge under the tag for that person or pet.

Chrome OS Dev Channel Gets Fifth & Likely Final Chrome 69 Build

The Chrome OS Dev Channel has been updated again with its fifth and likely final Chrome 69 build.  The new build is 69.0.3497.14 (Platform version: 10895.5.0) and it is already rolling out to eligible devices in the channel.  The update comes just a few days ahead of the release of Chrome 68 to the Chrome OS Stable Channel, which in turn would mean that Chrome 69 (likely this build) will be promoted to the Beta Channel next week.

For those that are new to Chrome OS, the Dev(eloper) Channel is considered the alpha build channel where new features are introduced and tested.  These builds tend to be pretty buggy and unstable and are not recommended for use on your daily driver Chromebook.

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