Google Chrome -145 Launches With JPEG-XL Support, Security Upgrades, and New Web Platform Features

Google has officially rolled out Chrome 145 to the stable release channel, bringing a slate of new features, enhancements, and foundational changes that aim to improve performance, expand web platform capabilities, and refine user and developer experiences on desktops and mobile devices alike. This update, which arrives on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, marks another step in Chrome’s ongoing evolution as the world’s most widely used web browser.

Reintroducing JPEG-XL Image Support

One of the most notable developments in Chrome 145 is the return of JPEG-XL (JXL) image decoding support, a format that Google had originally deprecated and removed from the Chromium codebase in 2022. JXL is a next-generation image format designed to deliver high image quality at smaller file sizes than legacy formats, making it attractive for both web developers and end users who value faster page loads without compromising visual fidelity.

Rather than resurrecting the older C++-based decoder library, Google opted for a Rust-based jxl-rs decoder, prioritizing memory safety and security. Rust’s strong guarantees against common memory bugs help reduce potential vulnerabilities that can arise when processing complex media formats. Although JXL support isn’t enabled by default yet, developers can test it via the enable-jxl-image-format flag, allowing the browser to decode JPEG-XL images directly.

For a browser environment where performance and efficient resource use are paramount, the return of JXL may signal renewed industry interest in modern image formats beyond WebP and AVIF, potentially setting the stage for broader adoption across the web ecosystem.

Under-The-Hood Enhancements for Web Developers

Chrome 145 introduces various platform improvements and CSS enhancements that give developers finer control over layout and styling. Among these, support for the CSS text-justify property enhances how browsers handle text alignment when using text-align: justify, giving websites more flexibility in typography and responsive layouts.

Additionally, this version expands how browsers compute shadows and clipping for elements with high border-radius values, making rounded UI components render more consistently with visual expectations. The update also exposes animation event handlers such as onanimationcancel to global event interfaces, completing part of the CSS Animations Level 1 specification.

Chrome 145 also brings support for percentage-based letter-spacing and word-spacing, enabling typography that better scales across different viewports and responsive layouts — a boon for developers aiming to fine-tune text presentation on diverse devices.

Session Security and Web Platform Features

Another noteworthy addition in Chrome 145 is Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC), which lets websites tie a user session to a specific device. This helps mitigate session theft risks — a common attack vector in which attackers hijack session cookies to impersonate users across sites.

Updates to IndexedDB — a core browser API for storing structured data on the client — now include an SQLite backend, offering performance and reliability improvements that benefit web apps relying on offline or local storage workflows.

Developers should also note changes around User-Agent strings: Chrome has fully removed the legacy policy that allowed enterprises to control how much user-agent information the browser sends. Instead, Chrome continues to use reduced User-Agent strings by default, with websites encouraged to adopt the more privacy-focused User-Agent Client Hints API for finer feature detection and device profiling.

Deprecations and Policy Cleanup

As part of its lifecycle management, Chrome 145 removes several obsolete technologies. Support for outdated virtual camera APIs on macOS has been discontinued, aligning Chrome’s behavior with macOS’s own security stance and discouraging legacy plugin models that have long since been phased out by Safari and other browsers.

Other deprecated policies removed in this release include the BMP extension for embedding JPEG or PNG data inside BMP containers — a niche and largely unsupported format — streamlining the browser’s codebase and reducing legacy cruft.

Stable Channel Deployment Across Devices

Chrome 145’s rollout is underway for multiple platforms. On desktops, the stable channel version (145.0.7632.45/.46) is being distributed gradually to users on Windows, macOS, and Linux, with performance improvements and stability fixes included alongside new features. Android users will begin seeing Chrome 145 via the Google Play Store, and iOS users will receive the update in the App Store.

Each platform’s build incorporates the same core update, although platform-specific optimizations ensure that the experience feels smooth and native, reflecting Google’s goal of maintaining feature and security parity across devices.

What This Means for Users and the Web

For everyday users, Chrome 145’s release means a more secure and performant browsing experience, with improved visual media support and enhanced session protections. For developers, the expanded CSS and web platform capabilities unlock new layout possibilities and better support for modern web app architectures.

Altogether, Chrome 145 reflects Google’s continued commitment to advancing web standards while balancing performance, security, and forward-looking innovation — a theme that has defined Chrome’s evolution as the default browser for billions worldwide.