Chrome 65 Rolls Out For Windows, Mac, Linux And Android With Security And Developer Updates

Google has released a new build of its Chrome browser to the stable channel, Chrome 65, which was made available first to Windows, Mac, and Linux systems, followed by an update to the version for Android devices. So as of this moment, Chrome 65 is available on all four platforms. The new version brings much improved security to Chrome, along with some new features for developers.

On the security side, Chrome 65 introduces 45 security fixes. Several of those are the result of lucrative bug hunting by security researchers who cashed in on Google's bug bounty program for Chrome. A researcher with Tencent Zhanlu Lab made off particularly well after discovering two Flash-related vulnerabilities with a "High" security rating. Each one of those was worth $5,000, netting him a tidy $10,000 for his efforts. There were several others that were thousands of dollars as well.


One of the new features for developers is the addition of the CSS Paint API, also known as CSS Custom Paint. This allows developers to program a webpage to have the browser generate an image rather than referencing an image resource. In certain cases, this can significant reduce data usage..

Chrome 65 also introduces a Serving Timing API.

"The new Server Timing API allows web servers to pass performance timing information via HTTP headers to browsers. This new API provides developers a more complete performance picture that includes the speed of both the client and the server. For example, Chrome Developer Tools now shows server timing performance information via the Server Timing API," Google explains.

One other thing worth mentioning is an experimential Web Authentication API in Chrome 65. This allows the creation and use of strong, attested, cryptographic scoped credentials by web applications, for the purpose of strongly authenticating users. As an experimental feature, this is not enabled by default, but can be turned on with a flag.

Chrome 65 arrives to the stable channel a month and a half after Google released the stable version of Chrome 64. If you are using Chrome on your desktop, you can initiate an update by clicking the three vertical dots in the upper-right corner and going to Help > About Google Chrome.