Google Chrome 73 released with dark mode support on macOS

Earlier today, Google began rolling out the latest Chrome release, version 73, which comes with support for a variety of new features, including support for hardware multimedia keys and a dark mode for macOS users.

The Chrome 73 update is already live, and if your browser hasn't received it already, users can request it manually by visiting their Chrome browser's built-in updater.

Most of the new features that shipped with today's release are mostly developer-centric updates and additions to Chrome's arsenal of Web APIs.

But while the bulk of the changes are features that regular users will never interact with --being there for website and app developers to use-- there are a few goodies that will be noticed by Chrome's normal users as well.

The biggest in-your-face update of all the new additions is one for macOS users. Starting with Chrome 73, the browser can now automatically switch to a dark mode whenever the macOS dark mode is also activated, or users can set their Chrome browser in a permanent dark mode if they choose to.

In addition, Chrome 73 also comes with support for the multimedia keys on your keyboard, which can now be used to control playback for both audio and video files.

Further, Chrome 73 also brings support for "progressive web apps" (PWAs) to macOS. PWAs are normal websites that can run as a separate native app on the underlying operating system. They use Chrome's engine, and they can run even if Chrome is shut down.

Starting with Chrome 73, Chrome PWAs will now be supported on all the six major operating systems --Android, Chrome OS, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows.

And last, but not least, on the security side, Chrome 73 is the first Chrome release in which Google will automatically block file downloads initiated from within a sandboxed iframes --a type of HTML iframes used for showing ads, but also by exploit kits to plant malware on users' computers.

Some additional reading material about today's Chrome 73 release:

• Chrome security updates are detailed here.
• Chromium open-source browser changes are detailed here.
• Google engineers detail some of the most important developer-centric changes here.
• All the Chrome 73 developer-centric deprecations and feature removals are here.
  
• Chrome for Android updates are detailed here.

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