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Right on time, Chrome 97 has been promoted to the stable channel and is now becoming available for download. The new release brings a few select refinements and improvements, but nothing too earth-shattering. You can expect some simplifications when you want to delete local data saved by a website, enhanced support for international keyboard layouts (yes, that's been a problem to this day), preparations for better HDR support, and some minor PWA advancements.

Website data deletion improvements

Google announced in a blog post that it has simplified storage controls in Chrome 97 by re-configuring its Privacy and Security settings. It's now possible to delete all data stored by a website by heading to Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Site Settings -> View permissions and data stored across files. This overview will replace the more granular controls that allowed you to delete individual cookies. Google's reasoning is that deleting individual cookies could lead to unintended behavior that could potentially break websites.

Chrome 97 storage management

The option to delete individual cookies will remain available in Chrome's DevTools, though. Google says the granular control is usually only needed by developers, so it's tucking the tools away from the places where regular folks could stumble upon them.

Better international keyboard support in desktop Chrome

This might not be a problem you'll ever run into when using a US keyboard, but if you live anywhere else in the world, you might have run into this already — websites will sometimes default to the US keyboard layout, even if your actual physical keyboard has other symbols written on them. Since Chrome's support for keyboards is pretty solid, this should be a super-rare edge case, but there are some occasions where developers need to be extra vigilant to make sure their websites understand which key you meant to hit. A new API makes it easier for websites to fetch which keyboard you're using, with these improvements being particularly important for cases like when Microsoft Office web apps run inside other services such as Outlook or Teams. As you may have guessed from this example, this is a fix introduced by Microsoft and will also come to its Edge browser.

Per-site page zoom on mobile

Websites sometimes just won't fit your screen or scale weirdly, and that's where page zoom comes in handy on desktop. That feature is finally making its way onto your phone, too, albeit behind a flag for now. When you enable chrome:flags#enable-accessibility-page-zoom, you'll be able to adjust and save zoom levels on a per-site basis, allowing you to view, say, Android Police in 90% and New York Times in 110% every time you visit.

Be sure to check out our in-dept guide on what page zoom is and how it works on mobile Chrome.

Preparing for three-digit version numbers

Chrome is soon going to be 100 years, I mean, versions old, and that will create some problems, as websites are used to check for two-digit version numbers when they want to judge compatibility. That's why starting with Chrome 96 (the version that went stable before 97), a flag has been added that returns '100' when checked for the version number. This will allow developers to prepare their websites for the inevitable Chrome 100 launch in a few months. The next Y2K may yet be prevented.


Chrome 97 is now rolling out on the Play Store. You can get it on your phone by checking for updates or via APK Mirror, and it's available for desktop machines on the Chrome website.

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UPDATE: 2022/01/05 03:31 EST BY MANUEL VONAU

Stable release

The article has been updated to reflect that Chrome 97 is now live in stable. A few more details have been added to some of the new features.