Chrome Under the Hood: Critical Security Patches and Hidden Flags to Boost Performance

Google has been busy securing Chrome recently, rolling out a fresh update on February 23, 2026, to address a handful of serious vulnerabilities. If you are running the browser on Windows or macOS, make sure you are bumped up to version 145.0.7632.116 or .117. Linux users need to look for version 144.0.7559.116, while the Android app is moving to 145.0.7632.120. Over in the Extended Stable Channel, version 144.0.7559.225 is slated to hit Windows and Mac in the coming weeks. Both Chrome and Microsoft Edge usually handle these updates automatically, but you can always force a manual check in the settings just to be safe.

The latest release notes highlight three high-severity fixes stemming from internal audits and fuzzing initiatives. The patches resolve an out-of-bounds read in Media (CVE-2026-3061) reported by Luke Francis, an out-of-bounds read and write in Tint (CVE-2026-3062) caught by cinzinga, and an inappropriate implementation in DevTools (CVE-2026-3063) flagged by M. Fauzan Wijaya.

The Active CSS Exploit This wave of fixes comes right after another critical update dropped on February 13. That mid-month patch pushed older browsers to version 145.0.7632.75 to squash CVE-2026-2441, a dangerous “use after free” flaw hidden in Chrome’s CSS processing. Carrying a CVSS 3.1 score of 8.8, that particular bug allowed attackers to run arbitrary code inside a sandbox using a manipulated HTML page. Security teams noted that the vulnerability was actively being exploited, making the rapid patch rollout a necessity.

Tinkering with Experimental Features While Google locks down the backend security, you can actively tweak how the browser feels on the frontend using Chrome Flags. Keep in mind that these are experimental test features that might never see a stable public release. Bugs are simply part of the deal. We tested these out on a custom Windows 11 PC running Chrome version 140.0.7339.186, and they definitely offer a better browsing experience if you don’t mind the occasional hiccup.

Smoothing Out the Interface Ever notice your pages stuttering when you scroll? It happens for a variety of reasons, but searching for and enabling “Smooth Scrolling” in the flags menu can seriously reduce the sluggishness. It is practically a must-have for Android users, though it works perfectly fine on Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS too.

Similarly, if you are using a convertible laptop or a Windows tablet, the standard desktop interface often feels clunky with touch commands. Searching for “Touch UI Layout” and flipping the drop-down menu to “Enabled” swaps the browser into a much more natural, touch-optimized layout.

Boosting Speed Under the Hood For raw speed, look into Google’s experimental QUIC protocol. Built entirely to make the web faster, turning this on gives you a noticeable speed boost, provided the websites you visit are actually optimized for it. Then there is the Zero-copy rasterizer. Enabling this allows Chrome threads to write directly to your GPU for tile management. Theoretically, this makes the whole browser run much faster, though whether you will actually feel the difference day-to-day is up for debate. Fair warning: turning on Zero-copy definitely makes Chrome more prone to crashing, so test it at your own risk.

If you want to keep experimenting under the hood, a few other notable flags worth exploring include Force Dark Mode, Parallel Downloading, GPU rasterization, Tab Scrolling, Partial swap, overriding the software rendering list, and turning on autofill predictions for general data or “buy now, pay later” features.