Apple’s MacBook Pro gained a new feature with its last refresh, the Touch Bar. Since the announcement in October, third-party applications have slowly been gaining support for the capability and now one of the more popular apps, Google Chrome, is adding support for Touch Bar…
Earlier today, Google quietly released the first canary build of Chrome 58. One thing quickly noted by MacBook Pro users was the added support for Touch Bar support, something that hasn’t been present in any version of Chrome released since the MacBook Pro was updated last fall.
With Touch Bar support, MacBook Pro users can now do things in Chrome such as launch a new tab, search, and more directly from the Touch Bar. On the far left side of the Touch Bar are backwards and forwards buttons, while a refresh button is next. Housed in the center of the Touch Bar is a “Search or Type URL” field that automatically jumps you to the address bar when tapped.
Last but not least, you’ll find a button to immediately add a new tab and a button to add a website to your favorites.
One thing worth noting here is that, as of right now, the Touch Bar buttons are static. They don’t change when you add a new tab and playback controls don’t appear when you start playing a video. You also don’t get word prediction as you type, for better or for worse.
Now that the Chrome canary channel has added support for Touch Bar with version 58, we can expect it to come to the stable channel sooner rather than later. Google offers four different channels of Chrome, including canary, developer, beta, and stable.
You can try out Touch Bar support in Chrome right now by downloading the canary build from Google’s website. This version will run parallel to any other Chrome channel you have installed. Using the canary build as your day-to-day browser might spell some trouble as it is expected to feature bugs and performance issues, but as is always the case, your mileage may very.
Head to Google’s website now to download the Chrome 58 canary build.
Thanks, Chase!
