Google has released Chrome 80 today, February 4th, 2020, to the Stable desktop channel for the Windows, macOS, Linux, Chrome OS, iOS, and Android platforms with bug fixes, new features, and 56 security fixes.
Included are new features such as a new secure-by-default cookie classification system, auto-upgraded mixed content, text URL fragments, SVG favicons, and more.
Windows, Mac, and Linux desktop users can upgrade to Chrome 80.0.3987.87 by going to
Settings ->
Help ->
About Google Chrome and the browser will automatically check for the new update and install it when available. Android and iOS users can update Chrome from their respective App stores.
Google Chrome 80 With Chrome 80 now being promoted to the Stable channel, Chrome 81 will soon (February 13th) be the Beta version and Chrome 82 will be the Canary version.
A full list of all security fixes in this release is available in the
Chrome 80 changelog , while the Chromium browser changes for Chrome 80 are listed
here .
SameSite Cookie Changes The highlight of the Google Chrome 80 version is the enforcing of a secure-by-default cookie classification system designed to treat cookies without a SameSite value SameSite=Lax cookies.
According to Google, only cookies set as SameSite=None; Secure will be available in third-party contexts, with the condition of being accessed from secure connections.
This change was
announced in May 2019, when Google also published
developer guidance for securing sites by marking cross-site cookies. This was followed by a subsequent
reminder with additional context issued in October 2019.
Firefox also implemented this new behavior
starting with version 69 and plans to make it a default behavior in the future. Microsoft is also planning to change the default cookie behavior starting with
Edge 80 .
"The SameSite-by-default and SameSite=None-requires-Secure behaviors will begin rolling out to Chrome 80 Stable for an initially limited population starting the week of February 17, 2020, excluding the US Presidents Day holiday on Monday,"
according to the Chromium Project.
A detailed explanation of what the new SameSite cookie changes are all about is available in the video embedded below.
VIDEO
Auto-upgraded mixed content Chrome 80 also auto-upgrades optionally-blockable mixed content (HTTP content in http sites) by automatically rewriting the URL to http, without providing an HTTP fallback and blocking them by default if they fail to load over http://.
In this release, only audio and video content will be upgraded with mixed images still being allowed to load. They will, however, be marked with a 'Not Secure' chip in the Omnibox.
"Developers can use the upgrade-insecure-requests or block-all-mixed-content Content Security Policy directives to avoid this warning," Google says.
Mixed content marked as insecure (Google) SVG favicons and text URL fragments Chrome 80 also adds support for using scalable SVG images as favicons which should reduce the number of such resources required for a website or app.
For instance, designers can use hand-tuned icons for smaller sizes and a scalable SVG icon for all other sizes needed across the site.
The new Chrome version also enables authors and users to
link to a specific portion of a webpage by adding a text fragment from the page to the website URL.
When that page is loaded in the browser, that text will be highlighted and Chrome will automatically scroll the fragment into view.
Developer tools changes Chrome 80 also comes with a selection of DevTools changes and improvements including but not limited to:
Support for let and class redeclarations
Improved WebAssembly debugging
Network Panel updates
Request Initiator Chains in the Initiator tab
URL and path columns in the Network panel
Updated User-Agent strings
New configuration UI
Per-function or per-block coverage modes
A detailed blog post on what's new in Chrome 80's developer tools is available
here .
A video presentation of the changes Chrome 80 brings for developers is embedded below.
VIDEO
Chrome 80 also comes with a long list of deprecated and removed features available on the
Chrome Platform Status page .
56 security vulnerabilities fixed The Chrome 80 release
fixes 56 security vulnerabilities , with the following discovered by external researchers:
High CVE-2020-6381: Integer overflow in JavaScript. Reported by The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on 2019-12-09 source 
