This update is currently rolling out to macOS and Windows machines, and if your copy of Chrome doesn’t automatically update itself, it’s easy to do it yourself. Click the three vertical dots button, click About and wait for the browser to download the update. Once it’s downloaded (and you’re OK with any open pages refreshing) click Relaunch to update to version 55. MORE: How to Reset the Backspace Button to Back in Chrome You’ll want to make the jump to version 55 soon if you want better battery life, a more stable browser (I see alerts that Flash crashed on a daily basis) and a safer internet. Flash earned its deservedly bad reputation thanks to report after report of ne’er-do-wells using its vulnerabilities to attack users systems. Often, malware gets injected into ads and then loads itself onto systems when the advertisement is displayed. When you navigate to other websites, Chrome will prompt users to enable Flash the first time they visit. Hopefully, enough users will decline to load Flash, which is often used as a malware attack vector, for web developers to stop using it and move over to HTML5. Chrome has inched towards this move for a number of years, starting in 2014 with Chrome 42, which set some Flash as click-to-play. In September of 2015, version 53 blocked Flash-based analytics and other elements, which Google claimed was the source of more than 90 percent of Flash usage.

Chrome Browser Tips

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