Chrome Canary on Android: Preview linked pages and Explore Offline card on New Tab

Google has currently enabled “Preview Page” context menu option (formerly Sneak Peek) in Chrome 79 on Android which allows to view linked page content in an overlay and lets you open it in a new tab, Chromium team could soon show security indicator and URL for preview content as they decided to experiment “Ephemeral Tab” feature on 1% of stable population. And Chrome Canary now shows “Explore your Offline feed” card on the new tab when you’re offline, this is available behind a flag.

The Ephemeral Tab flag which lets you “sneak peek at a linked page in an overlay” from a page context menu via an option, is now turned on by default in Chrome Canary on Android.

If you now hold and right click on a link in a page, you’ll see the “Preview Page” option, tapping this opens the page at the bottom in a pane, you can swipe up to see the page content. The panel now shows “Open in a new tab” option and soon will show security indictor and complete URL in Omnibox, check the above mockup.

Chrome on Android already allows you to read articles offline if you download them when you’re online, Google is now trying to display a card on the new tab which suggests to explore offline feed when you’re offline. The card takes you to “Offline Home” to check articles available under the “Explore offline” tab.

To test the feature right now

1. Ensure you’re using the latest Chrome Canary

2. Visit chrome://flags

3. Search for home, for “Offline Home”, select ” Enabled” and restart the browser.