The launch of the latest has been announced Google stable version «Chrome 134» and It brings a number of significant innovations and improvements that enhance both the user experience and the security of the browser. In addition, this version is launched alongside Chromium, the open source project on which Chrome is based.
Chrome 134 addresses a number of vulnerabilities detected in the previous version. In total, 14 vulnerabilities have been fixed, Many of these were identified using advanced security analysis tools. One of the fixed vulnerabilities is CVE-2025-1914, in the V8 engine that caused out-of-bounds access and has been rated as high severity.
Main novelties of Chrome 134
One of the main changes that users will notice is the user interface revamp. Starting with this version, customization of the Toolbar becomes simpler. Via the “Menu -> Additional Tools -> Configure Chrome” option, users can manage and reorganize shortcuts with greater flexibility, making the browser better suited to your needs.
Another of the changes that Chrome 134 presents is the Phasing out support for Manifest version 2 for extensions. Although this process is taking place gradually, has already started causing problems, especially among users of the uBlock Origin plugin, as it stopped working correctly due to the disabling of this version of the manifest.
However, Google has provided an alternative in the form of uBlock Origin Lite (uBOL), which is compatible with the new version of the manifest, although with some limitations in its functionality. As we move forward with this transition, Google plans to completely remove support for version 2 by the middle of this year, which has generated complaints among the user community. It is important to note that Edge (the Microsoft browser) has also started implementing these changes, while Firefox continues to maintain support for the classic extension blocking mode.
Chrome has also made changes in extension handling. Now the Extensions unzipped Manually installed apps can only be activated if developer mode is enabledThis measure aims to improve browser security by preventing malicious or unverified extensions from running without proper control.
Linux Improvements: Optimization for Wayland
With regard to the Wayland support, Chromium continues to work on improving performance in this environment. Now It is possible to use fractional scale and take advantage of experimental support for the extension text-input-v3, which improves interaction with text input.
Additionally, the xdg-toplevel-drag protocol has been implemented, which allows for smoother moving of tabs, as well as the linux-drm-syncobj-v1 protocol, which eliminates tearing during rendering.
Security improvements: password protection
On the security improvements side, Chrome 134 uses a machine learning model to detect password fields in web formsThis detection is performed locally on the device, ensuring that users can quickly identify password fields without compromising their privacy.
In addition, to protect against fraudulent pages, a new functionality has been implemented in the browser: a dand AI that analyzes the content of web pages to detect signs of phishing or fraud. If a suspicious page is identified, an additional check is carried out on Google servers.
Android improvements: new options for reading mode
In the Android version of Chrome, a feature has been introduced new tool which uses an advanced language model to detect intrusive or annoying notifications directly on the device.
In addition to that, he reading modenow includes an option to read aloud the content of the pagesUsing a speech synthesizer, users can select the reading speed, choose between different voices and highlight the word being spoken in real time.
Tools for web developers
Chrome 134 introduces several improvements to developer tools, including A new “Privacy and Security” panel has been added, which allows testing the behavior of websites in an environment where third-party cookies are blocked.
As for the graphic part, Chrome 134 includes improvements to rendering with the canvas element, introducing the imageSmoothingQuality attribute, which allows developers to Choose between different quality levels when scaling imagesAdditionally, the WebGPU API has been extended with support for subgroups, which improves the efficiency of communication between different groups of calls to the GPU.
How to update or install Chrome on Ubuntu and derivatives?
If you are able to update your browser to the new version, you should know that you can do so by following the instructions we share below. The first thing you should do is check if the update is already available, for this you have to go to chrome: // settings / help and the notification that there is an update will appear.
In case it is not so you must close your browser and you are going to open a terminal and type:
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Again, open your browser and it should have already been updated or the update notification will appear.
In case you want to install the browser or choose to download the deb package to update, we must go to the web page of the browser to obtain the deb package and to be able to install it in our system with the help of the package manager or from the terminal. The link is this.
Once the package is obtained, we only have to install with the following command:
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb