For the first few years of Android’s existence, the stock browser was a bKit-based affair that was only updated when the OS was. Now, Chrome ships on nearly all Android phones tablets, it’s updated at near light speed via the ay Store. It’s gotten a lot better over the years, but many of the best features are not immediately apparent, a few need to be toggled on. Here’s what you need to know to get the most out of Chrome on Android.

Advanced gestures

Most people know that you can drag down to refresh pages in Chrome, but do you know how to switch tabs with a swipe? obably not. If you swipe left right across the address bar, you can move instantly from one open tab to the next.

The quick tab switching is great when you’ve got a hful of open tabs, but if you’ve got more, you’ll probably want to get into the full tab list. Don’t just go for that button, though. You can drag down from the address bar, opening the tab list scrolling through it in one swipe. If you just need to peel at what you’ve got open, you can drag right back up to close the tab list without even releasing the screen.

Make reader mode more useful

Chrome has included a “reader mode” for the last couple years, which is designed to make non-mobile web pages more friendly on your device. Reader mode strips out all the ads, social buttons, sidebars, so on. at you’re left with is just the content. A banner will pop up at the bottom when you can activate reader mode. However, Chrome is very conservative about when it offers you the option of engaging reader mode. You can exp its usefulness with a quick flag edit, though.

To access Chrome’s flags, simply type “chrome://flags” into the address bar. This lets you control which features are active when—it’s all the stuff doesn’t want to put in the main app settings, because if you don’t know what you’re doing you might break something. So, be careful. The flag you’re looking for is called “#Reader mode triggering.” By default, reader mode will only be an option when Chrome thinks a page is especially poor on mobile. You can choose to have it always be an option, which can be annoying, or just when Chrome detects something with an article-like layout.

Tap to search

The internet is a big place full of wonder a great many confusing things. If you’re ever in need of a little context while browsing, Chrome has a very useful way to search for things. Simply long-press to highlight a word or phrase, you can instantly search for it without even leaving the page you’re on.

The text you highlight appears in a bar at the bottom of the screen—maybe you’ve seen it a dozen times never thought to investigate further. Tap it or drag up you’ll get a search page. It starts just partially open so you can see if there’s a hy knowledge graph card at the top. You can continue sliding it up to get a regular page of search results for the words you highlighted. en you’re done, just slide it back down you’re where you started.

Scroll anchoring

One of these most aggravating experiences in mobile browsing is when you attempt to tap a link as a page is loading only to have the page jump. Best case, you tap an open space. However, you’ll often end up tapping an ad instead. You can stop that from happening again by enabling scroll anchoring.

This will involve another trip into the Chrome flags, but this time you’re looking for a flag called “#enable-scroll-anchoring.” Flip it to enabled prayers won’t jump during loading anymore.

Recent tabs

One of Chrome’s most powerful features on Android isn’t exactly hidden, but the generic name bellies it’s awesome usefulness—recent tabs. This isn’t just the games recently open on your phone or tablet, but on all your Chrome devices.

This feature works automatically, you just need to take advantage of it. You’ll find the recent tabs list in the overflow menu at the very bottom of the new tab page. Open it, you have recent tabs from your current device, but below that is a collapsible list for watch phone, tablet, computer with Chrome installed logged into your account. You never have to worry about emailing yourself a link again.