Google is adding a new feature to the next release of Chrome that will proactively alert you when an extension isnât in the Chrome Web Store, according to a post from Oliver Dunk, a developer relations engineer for Chrome extensions. The new feature, being added as part of Chrome 117, will make it easier to stay on top of extensions that have been removed by a developer, been taken down for violating the Chrome Web Store policies, or been marked as malware.
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Chrome will soon tell you why an extension disappeared
Google is adding a new feature to Chrome 117 that will proactively alert you when an extension isn’t in the Chrome Web Store. The company is also going to automatically upgrade URLs with HTTP to HTTPS.
Dunk says Chrome will show extensions that fall under those categories in a âSafety checkâ section in the privacy and security part of Chromeâs settings. âWhen a user clicks âReview,â they will be taken to their extensions and given the choice to either remove the extension or hide the warning if they wish to keep the extension installed,â Dunk explains. âAs in previous versions of Chrome, extensions marked as malware are automatically disabled.â
Thatâs not the only security-related update Google discussed for Chrome on Wednesday. The company is going to automatically upgrade all http:// URLs to https://, the more secure version of HTTP that encrypts your traffic, âeven when you click on a link that explicitly declares http://,â according to a separate blog post. Google says it will detect when the attempted upgrades donât work, and when that happens, Chrome will fall back to http://. Google is âexperimentingâ with the change in Chrome 115 (Chrome 116 is the current stable release). The company plans to roll it out to everyone âsoon.â
Google also says that Chrome will soon show a warning when you try to download âhigh-risk filesâ while on an insecure connection. The warnings are set to roll out in mid-September, and you can see Googleâs example image of what they will look like below.