Google Chrome, the world's most popular browser, frequently gets new features through updates that enhance its functionality and improve the user experience. One such feature is Link Preview, which as the name indicates, lets you view previews of webpages simply by hovering your mouse cursor over links. While the feature is enabled by default on Chrome Canary, the experimental version of the browser, you can also turn it on in the stable version by following these steps.

  1. Open Chrome, type chrome: //flags in the address bar, and press Enter.
  1. When the Chrome flags page opens, click inside the search box at the top and type preview.
  1. Click on the dropdown button on the right of the Link Preview option and change it to 'Enabled' from 'Default'. Alternatively, you can select the 'Enabled Alt + Click', 'Enabled Alt + Hover', or the 'Enabled Long Press' option.
  1. Click on the 'Relaunch' button that appears in the lower right corner to restart the browser.
  1. When Chrome relaunches, go to a website that has links. Press and hold the Alt key and position your mouse cursor over a link to see a preview of the page. Alternatively, you can right-click on the link and then click on the 'Preview link'.

Things to know

  • The feature can be unstable right now and doesn't work on macOS or Touch Devices.
  • The size of the preview window will depend on how you have resized your Chrome browser and will always be smaller than Chrome's window.
  • You cannot resize the preview window manually and cannot play videos or games in it. However, you can move it using your mouse and continue scrolling on the page where it appears.
  • The Link Preview feature only lets you preview one link at a time. Once you see the preview of a webpage, you will need to close it before you can open another preview.
  • If you do not wish to use the Link Preview feature, you can disable it at any time by following the same steps and setting the Link Preview option to 'Disabled'.