Web Browser Chrome 126 Released with Built-In OCR Feature

Google published the release of Web browser Chrome 126. At the same time the stable release of the free project Chromium acting as the basis of Chrome is available. Chrome browser differs from Chromium by the presence of a system sending a notification in case of collapse, modules for playing DRM video content, an automatic update installation system, constant inclusion of Sandbox isolation, provision of the key to Google API, and transmission when searching for RLZ parameters. For those who need more time to update, the Extended Stable branch is separately supported, accompanied by 8 weeks. The next issue of Chrome 127 is scheduled for July 23.

Main changes in 126:

  • The built-in PDF viewer integrates the possibility of extracting text from documents, called through the “Extract Text from PDF” option in the context menu. For scanned documents with text inserted as an image, optical character recognition (OCR) based on a machine learning system is used. This new feature is expected to simplify work with PDF documents for people with vision problems who use screen readers. In the future, text recognition on images shown on pages and in screenshots is planned to be implemented. The OCR engine is included by default for 50% of users, and the rest can activate it through the “Chrome://Flags/#PDF-OCR” option.
  • On the performance parameter configurator page (“Productivity/Saving memory” in the Chrome://Settings/Performance section), the ability to configure the level of aggressiveness of the memory-saving mode has been added. This mode reduces RAM usage by releasing memory occupied
/Reports, release notes, official announcements.