No matter how big your mobile phone screen is or how effective your smartphone browser is, surfing the internet will never be perfect. The problems of mobile browsers are much more limited than those of the browser, they have hidden keys, they have functions that can only be activated by making particular gestures with the finger and they often view the sites in a different way.
Browsing the internet from a mobile phone remains a bit frustrating if you don't first learn some tricks that we see, in a synthetic way, in this general guide that applies to Google Chrome on Android iPhone and iPad .
In another article, however, tricks and better functions are written for Safari on iPhone and iPad
1) Scroll through the open tabs
Chrome supports finger gestures to quickly switch between tabs.
These gestures work on Android phones, iPhones, iPads, but not on the tablet version of Chrome.
On an Android phone, place your finger anywhere on the Chrome toolbar and swipe your finger left or right.
Swiping your finger down you will see all the tabs open.
On the iPhone or iPad, you have to place your finger on the edge of the screen and scroll inward to move between the open tabs.
2) List of cards (only on Android phones)
Touch the tab key at the top to view all the open tabs on Chrome.
Touch a tab to switch to that or touch the X button to close it.
To close it, you can also put your finger on an open tab and swipe your finger left or right.
You can quickly close all open tabs using the Close All Tabs option in the menu.
3) Double tap to zoom
Chrome has an "intelligent zoom" feature that allows you to double-tap anywhere on a website to zoom in.
For example, if you are viewing a website in desktop version and the text is lowercase, just double-tap to zoom in on that part of the page.
This feature is not active on mobile versions of websites and only works on sites designed for PCs.
Of course you can also use pinches on the screen to zoom in and out.
4) History and Find on the page
In the Chrome options you can open the history of the sites already visited.
This option was previously hidden and appeared in the latest versions.
In the options you can also find the text search function on the page you are visiting.
5) Google Voice Search
You can use voice search by speaking on the phone with Chrome by tapping the microphone icon in the address bar.
6) Request PC version of a site
To request the desktop version of a website in Chrome, you need to tap the Menu button and select the option.
Chrome will pretend that you are using a computer.
In this way it is also possible to open sites like Repubblica.it and Corriere.it in a complete way, without having to pay for the contents visible from the mobile phone.
7) Open sites already open on your computer and bookmark sync.
The best feature of Google Chrome and the reason to use it as the main browser on the phone and also on the iPhone is that, if Chrome is also used on the PC, each favorite site is synchronized and can be found on the mobile phone.
Not only that, even the latest tabs open on the PC can be found on the mobile phone.
This tab syncing in Chrome only requires that you use the same Google Account on Chrome and on your mobile phone.
To view the tabs open from other devices you just have to open a new tab and then tap the third buttons at the bottom right.
READ ALSO: Google Chrome for iPad and iPhone synchronized with the PC
8) Bandwidth reduction
In Chrome you can save bandwidth and surf faster as explained in another article, on Android and iPhone.
If you activate the function to reduce the use of data, the loaded web pages will be routed through the Google servers, compressed and then returned to the mobile phone.
This will help reduce data consumption on Chrome, which is very important if you have a limited amount of mobile data in your subscription.
9) Preloading websites
The pre-load function is active by default and makes Chrome capable of automatically recovering the web page that is thought to be loaded later.
By default, this feature is enabled only when using a Wi-Fi connection to avoid consuming precious mobile data.
The option can be changed in the Settings menu -> Bandwidth Management.
10) Print from Chrome
Chrome integrates Google Cloud Print technology on all platforms.
Then touch the menu key and touch the Print option to print on any Google cloud-enabled printer.
Google cloud printing works with any printer that is shared via Google Cloud Print on Chrome from PC.
On iPhone and iPad, Chrome also supports Apple's AirPrint which however is not supported by all printers.
READ ALSO: Print via internet from PC and mobile phones (Google Cloud Print)
Finally, as in Chrome for PC, you can type the Chrome: // flags address on the address bar to access the experimental functions menu (only on Android).
We recommend that you don't change any of these settings if you don't know what you're doing.
READ ALSO: Improve Chrome on Android by changing these 10 Settings
To conclude it is important to note that Chrome on iPhone and iPad is essentially a different interface than Safari which is the browser integrated in iOS imposed by the system.
