Chrome 138 brings another round of impactful updates, with a sharp focus on speed, AI capabilities, and smarter caching strategies. For businesses and developers, this version introduces a new wave of performance tools - especially for speculative loading - and groundbreaking APIs that bring built-in translation, summarization, and language detection directly into the browser.

Let’s break down what’s new and why it matters for your site’s performance and user experience.

Performance enhancements: Smarter caching for Speculative Loading

Clear-Site-Data header adds prefetchCache and prerenderCache

Google Chrome now allows developers to clear specific types of speculative data via the Clear-Site-Data header. Two new values - "prefetchCache" and "prerenderCache" - let teams target and manage cached pages that were preloaded or prerendered ahead of time.

Why It Matters:

🧹 Fine-grained cache control lets businesses optimize page freshness without disrupting the entire user session.

🚀 It’s a must-have for websites using advanced navigation tools like Navigation AI, which rely on speculation rules to deliver ultra-fast experiences.

Speculation Rules: New target_hint field

Speculative navigation just got more intelligent. Chrome 138 expands the speculation rules syntax with a target_hint field. This allows developers to define where a prerendered page will be activated - either in the current tab _self or a new one _blank.

Why It Matters:

🧠 Smarter predictions mean fewer wasted prerenders and more efficient use of system resources.

🌍 This is a big win for performance-focused products like Navigation AI by Uxify, which automatically prerenders the pages your users are most likely to visit next. With target_hint, those prerenders are even more aligned with user behavior, delivering faster loads and smoother experiences.

New APIs: Built-in AI for smarter experiences

Translator API

Chrome now ships with a JavaScript API that allows developers to programmatically translate content on their site. This goes beyond the browser’s default auto-translate, giving full control to the developer.

Why It Matters:

🌐 Businesses serving global audiences can tailor multilingual experiences without relying on third-party APIs or plugins.

🛠 Developers can integrate seamless translation flows into user interfaces - like live chat, forms, or product descriptions - directly in-browser.

Language Detector API

This API helps detect the language of any given text, including confidence levels. It’s especially useful when paired with the Translator API, helping developers handle multilingual content dynamically.

Why It Matters:

🤖 Combines powerfully with AI-enhanced chat, personalization, or form experiences where language detection is critical.

📈 Helps businesses better understand and serve users in their native language - without friction.

Summarizer API

Using an AI model built into the browser, the Summarizer API delivers fast, context-aware summaries of any block of text. There’s no need to load third-party libraries or make external API calls.

Why It Matters:

🧠 Whether it’s summarizing articles, user reviews, or customer service responses, businesses now have a lightweight, privacy-respecting way to deliver clarity and relevance at scale.

📉 Avoids performance hits from external AI services - summarization happens right in the browser.

Other Noteworthy Updates

• Better security against XSS: Chrome now escapes < and > in attribute values during serialization, reducing the risk of mutation-based XSS attacks.

• Crash reporting improvements: Developers can now see if a crash happened in the top-level context and whether the page was visible at the time.

• Smarter push subscriptions: When users re-enable push permissions, a new pushsubscriptionchange event fires automatically, allowing cleaner re-subscription flows.
  
  

Final Thoughts

Chrome 138 is more than just a technical upgrade - it’s a step toward a smarter, faster web. From advanced caching and prerender controls to built-in AI tools, this release empowers teams to streamline performance and personalize experiences - all while respecting user privacy and speed.

Tools like Navigation AI by Uxify take full advantage of these capabilities, helping sites deliver instant navigations, lower bounce rates, and better Core Web Vitals.