Download Google Chrome 106 With Translate Highlighted Text And Built-In RSS Reader

Google continues with its Chrome rapid release cycle by releasing Chrome 106 exactly 28 days after the release of Chrome 105. As the announcement says, this update fixes 20 security flaws, of which five are high and eight are medium risk.

Chrome 106 also includes some enhancements and new features that we will discuss in detail in this article. These features include selective translation options for highlighted text, a built-in RSS reader, and better bookmarks and notes for websites.

There are some new enhancements for the developers that we’ll discuss in the next section.

Release Summary

Improvements in Chrome 106

Translate Highlighted Text

Chrome 106 now has the ability to translate highlighted text only. Previously, it was only possible to translate the complete page by selecting the “Translate to English” context menu item. Now you can translate selective text. This is especially useful if a website uses more than one language on its pages.

This feature also needs to be enabled. To enable the Desktop Partial Translate feature, open the following URL in Chrome 106:

chrome://flags/#desktop-partial-translate

Enable the item and restart your browser. Now whenever you have selected text on a webpage, the context menu item “Translate to English” will automatically translate only the selected text by default. You can translate the full page by unselecting everything on the page and then selecting “Translate to English” from the context menu.

Note: I use Vivaldi as my primary browser and Vivaldi already has this feature implemented far better than Chrome at the moment.

Built-In RSS Reader

Google has once again released Chrome with a built-in RSS reader. Previously it was only possible to add RSS feeds in Chrome using Google Reader. Since Google Reader has been discontinued but RSS still remains a popular format to get updates from websites, Google has added the feature to Chrome itself.

Once you have updated Chrome to version 106, you can right-click on any webpage and select “Follow site” to start getting updates for the site. The feature seems to be in the early stages of development and is quite confusing.

Follow site Chrome 106
Follow site Chrome 106

When I click on Follow site context menu item, it does nothing. The side panel for sites followed is still an experimental feature where you can see all the sites you’re following. To enable the side panel for following sites, open the following URL in Chrome:

chrome://flags/#following-feed-sidepanel

Select Enable from the dropdown in front of “Following Feed in the sidepanel”. Once enabled, relaunch your browser and you’ll see a sidepanel icon in the toolbar beside the addressbar.

Enable feed in sidepanel Chrome 106
Enable feed in sidepanel Chrome 106

Since I use Vivaldi as my primary browser, I can see that Vivaldi is way ahead of Chrome in terms of RSS features. Vivaldi already has an RSS feed reader built into the browser and it’s easier to use than Chrome’s.

Advanced Search Capabilities

Users can now limit their searches to search history, opened tabs, and bookmarks, directly from the Omnibox at the top of the browser.

Instead of navigating through different pages to get to a search result, you can now directly enter what you are looking for in the Omnibox. For example, if you want to search through all the opened tabs, you can simply type in “@tabs“, press the spacebar, and then enter the tab you are looking for.

Perform a tab search
Perform a tab search

You can then select an option from the list, and the selected tab will then be on the top. Note that this won’t open the same tab in a new tab, but take you to the one which is already opened.

Similarly, you can also perform a quick search directly from your Omnibox in your browsing history. To do so, type in “@history“, hit the spacebar, and then enter the keyword for your search, as in the image below:

Search your browsing history
Search your browsing history

You can then select the search result you are looking for and it will open it in a new tab, or you can simply press Enter when the Omnibox is in focus to take you to the browsing history page.

Additionally, you can also search your bookmarks by typing in “@bookmarks” followed by the search keyword(s).

Search your bookmarks
Search your bookmarks

That said, this is still an experimental feature, which means that it needs to be enabled through a Chrome flag. To enable this advanced search feature using Omnibox, open the following URL in Chrome:

chrome://flags/#omnibox-site-search-starter-pack

Select Enable from the dropdown in front of “Omnibox Site Search Starter Pack”. Once enabled, relaunch your browser and you’ll be able to perform these advanced searches.

Enable flag
Enable flag

Improvements for the Developers

A total of eight features have been added for the developers in Chrome 106.

CSS ‘ic’ Length Unit: Support for expressing CSS lengths relative to the used advanced measures of CJK water ideograph.

Deprecate Persistent Quota: Support of the window.PERSISTENT quota type in requestFileSystem() will be deprecated soon.

Deprecate non-ASCII characters in cookie domain attributes: To align with the latest specification in RFC 6265bis, Chromium will reject cookies with a “Domain” attribute that contains a non-ASCII character.

Enforce CORS in subresource SignedExchange prefetching: Changes the request mode and credentials mode of prefetch requests used in Subresource prefetching+loading via Signed HTTP Exchange.

Intl.NumberFormat v3 API: Intl.NumberFormat v3 API is a new TC39 ECMA402 stage 3 proposal extend the pre-existing Intl.NumberFormat, with the following new features:

  1. Add 3 new functions to format the range of numbers:
    formatRange / formatRangeToParts / selectRange
  2. Grouping Enum
  3. New Rounding/Precision Options
  4. Rounding Priority
  5. Interpret Strings as Decimals
  6. Rounding Modes
  7. Sign Display Negative

SerialPort BYOB reader support: Updates the underlying data source for the ReadableStream provided by the SerialPort to be a readable byte stream. This change is backward-compatible with the existing code that calls port.readable.getReader() with no parameters. Developers can detect support for BYOB readers by calling getReader({ mode: ‘byob’ }) as older implementations will throw a TypeError when the new parameter is passed.

Unprefix -webkit-hyphenate-character CSS property: This change supports unprefixed hyphenate-character, not only -webkit-hyphenate-character.

WebCodecs dequeue event: This feature tracks adding a single event named “dequeue” to the audio, video encoder, and decoder interfaces.

For detailed information on these updates, please visit chromestatus.

Update to Chrome 106

If you already have Google Chrome installed on your computer, then updating it would be easy. Follow the guide below to update your existing Chrome browser to version 105.

  1. Launch Google Chrome and click on the ellipses (3 dots) in the top-right corner of the browser. Then, expand Help, and click About Google Chrome.

    About Google Chrome
    About Google Chrome
  2. As soon as the About page opens, the browser will start searching for an update and then automatically download it. Once it is ready to install, you will be presented with a Relaunch button. Click Relaunch.

    Note: The browser closes when you click Relaunch and then reopens, restoring all closed tabs.

    Relaunch 1
    Relaunch Chrome

The browser will now close and reopen. Once it does, you can navigate to the About Google Chrome page again and confirm that it has indeed been updated to version 106.

Chrome updated to version 106
Chrome updated to version 106

There are a few different methods that can also be used to update your Chrome browser to the latest version, including:

  • Update using Google update
  • Use the downloaded Chrome installer
  • Using Ninite
  • Download Chrome without using a browser

You can learn more about these methods in this guidepost.

You may also download the Chrome browser from the links given below if you do not already have it.

Download Google Chrome 106

Click on the links below to download Chrome 106:

DownloadGoogle Chrome web installer

DownloadGoogle Chrome offline installer

DownloadGoogle Chrome MSI Installer [Enterprise Edition]

DownloadGoogle Chrome for macOS

DownloadGoogle Chrome Offline Installer for Linux

DownloadGoogle Chrome for Android

DownloadGoogle Chrome for iOS

DownloadGoogle Chrome Portable

Install Google Chrome 106

Installing the Chrome browser on a Windows PC is as easy as downloading them. The process may vary for different platforms.

Download the file from the links above and then double-click it to execute. The rest of the process is pretty much automatic. The setup will download the required files (if the web installer was downloaded), install them for you and the browser will launch itself as soon as it is installed successfully.

installing Chrome
Chrome 106 installing

The process is the same for all Windows versions.

Google Chrome Changelog History

Google Chrome Releases Version History

Chrome VersionRelease DateFeatures
Chrome 122 (Early Stable)20-Feb-24WebGPU enhancements, Read Aloud for Android, and Help Me Write introduced
Chrome 12123-Jan-24Auto-grouping of tabs using AI, experimental generative AI tools to write text and create custom themes.
Chrome 1205-Dec-23Auto-grouping of tabs using AI, copy and save video frames, pin side panel elements to toolbar, improved transparent navigation bar on Android
Chrome 11931-Oct-2315 security updates, save and sync grouped tabs, smart Omnibox with typo detection, and continue where you left off on another device for iOS.
Chrome 11810-Oct-2320 security patches, extended Passkey support, Read Aloud in Reading Mode
Chrome 11712-Sep-23New Material You designs, intimation of potentially malicious web store extensions .
Chrome 11615-Aug-23Security update cadence changed to weekly from biweekly, One-Time permissions, 26 security patches
Chrome 11512-Jul-23Includes Topics API (Privacy Sandbox), reading mode, improved Memory Saver UI, HTTP automatic conversion to HTTPS
Chrome 11430-May-23Improves the Google Password Manager, introduces Popover API for developers , and adds auto-verification of CAPTCHAs.
Chrome 11326-Apr-23Makes notes in the sidebar, deletes the last 15-minute browsing history on Android, adds a bookmark or translate button in the toolbar on Android, enable or disables all extensions, and WebGPU enabled by default.
Chrome 1124-Apr-23Removal of Chrome app support, improved UI (experimental), CSS Nesting, WebAssembly Tail Call
Chrome 1116-Mar-23Automatic lazy-loading, sharing selected regions of the screen, and several improvements for Chromebooks
Chrome 1107-Feb-23Improved Password Manager and Google Translate controls, Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State, opt-out support for Secure Payment Confirmation
Chrome 10910-Jan-23Conditional focus on screen sharing, Material You theming support
Chrome 10829-Nov-22Evergy saver mode, COLRv1 fonts, resize virtual keyboards (Android)
Chrome 10725-Oct-22HEVC hardware decoding, screen-sharing improvements, and User-Agent reduction (Phase 5)
Chrome 10628-Sep-22Selective text translation, integrated RSS reader, and advanced search improvements to Omnibox.
Chrome 10530-Aug-22Improvements for web applications in terms of customizations
Chrome 1042-Aug-22Automatic lazy-loading, share selected regions of the screen, and several improvements for Chromebooks
Chrome 10321-Jun-22Pre-fetch page data for faster loading, local fonts for web apps, and block notifications automatically.
Chrome 10224-May-22Extensions Starter Kit, New Keyboard Shortcuts, And Continued Searches
Chrome 10126-Apr-22Improved downloads UI, save group tabs, and password manager
Chrome 10029-Mar-22Multi-screen API , audio controls
Chrome 991-Mar-22Handwriting Recognition, Date Picker, And Security Improvements
Chrome 981-Feb-22Built-in screenshot tool, smoother emojis with COLRv1, Emojis to screenshots on Android
Chrome 974-Jan-22Delete data saved by websites, zoom settings, better web application layouts, HDR enabled
Chrome 9615-Nov-21Faster navigation, dark mode per site, flags for testing v100
Chrome 9519-Oct-21Save grouped tabs, secure payments
Chrome 9421-Sep-21HTTPS-only mode, sharing hub
Chrome 9015-Apr-21AV1 codecs support, window naming feature
Download Google Chrome Offline Installers [Stable, Beta, Canary]
Google Chrome features introduced in each version
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Usman Khurshid is a seasoned IT Pro with over 15 years of experience in the IT industry. He has experience in everything from IT support, helpdesk, sysadmin, network admin, and cloud computing. He is also certified in Microsoft Technologies (MCTS and MCSA) and also Cisco Certified Professional in Routing and Switching.

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