Chrome‘s address bar, also known as the omnibar, is one of the best features of this browser. It works literally for anything. From it we can search open tabs, open settings, access history, favorites … and, of course, go to a web page through its URL. Soon, thanks to one of the latest changes implemented by Google, using this omnibar will be much faster and more secure thanks to HTTPS .
Today, most of the web pages we visit use HTTPS. And not only that, but if today we still visit HTTP websites , which do not have a connection certificate, it is better not to visit them, since our data can almost certainly be compromised. However, what we usually don’t do is write this protocol at the beginning of the URL. We will rarely type “https://www.softzone.es” in the browser, but rather type “softzone.es” and let the browser do its magic.
Chrome, by default, uses HTTP to connect to the web. And if the web is well programmed, it will automatically send the browser to load its HTTPS version . This makes sense, since HTTP has been the most used protocol for a long time, but it implies poor security, in the first connection attempts, and an unnecessary return to reach a much more direct destination.
Certificates for HTTPS connections in the past were very expensive, involved the use of a very powerful server, and made web sites slower. However, today all this has changed. And for this reason, browsers must also adapt to the new times.
Chrome’s omnibar will use HTTPS by default
As we can see in this change in Chrome, the Google browser will update the omnibar so that, when we write in it, it tries to connect to the web through HTTPS. In case it cannot (because the web is not compatible), then it will be when you try to connect through HTTP.
There is not much more to explain about this new feature. If we manually write HTTP or HTTPS, we will avoid going around this way. Although, to be honest, the times we do it are very small, if not zero. Therefore, this change makes a lot of sense in terms of improving the default security and performance of the browser.
New feature availability
This change will be implemented directly in Chromium, so, in addition to Chrome, other browsers (Edge, Opera, etc.) may also receive this improvement. Mozilla, at the moment, has not indicated if it intends to do something similar. What Mozilla did in Firefox 80 is to introduce an optional mode that blocks HTTP connections by default.
As for its availability, we do not know exactly when this new feature will be available. The changes are already rolling out to Chromium , and when they’re ready they’ll hit Chrome Canary . From there they will continue to be debugged until they reach the stable version of the browser.
Google has also not given details on whether or not performance improves. It is expected that some speed will be noticed when we try to connect to websites with HTTPS, while when we try to access HTTP websites the loading speed will be somewhat less when having to turn around. Since there is less and less HTTP, we shouldn’t tell the difference.
We also remember that it is possible to activate DNS over HTTPS to improve the security and privacy of DNS requests when visiting a website.