Chrome 146 Now In Beta With WebNN Origin Trial For Neural Networks In The Browser
([Google] 5 Hours Ago
Chrome 146 Beta)
- Reference: 0001612857
- News link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Chrome-146-Beta
- Source link:
Following yesterday's [1]Chrome 145 release with JPEG-XL support , Chrome 146 today was promoted to the beta channel to help facilitate broader testing of the next round of Chrome/Chromium browser improvements.
Chrome 146 has promoted WebNN to an origin trial in this release. WebNN is the Neural Network API for leveraging inference hardware acceleration of the client system where available. WebNN aims to let web applications and frameworks tap the underlying NPUs and/or other machine learning / hardware capabilities of the client system and its native operating system services. The hope with this WebNN API is providing a richer and more efficient machine learning experience on the web. Granted, not all will be happy about the notion of letting web sites/apps take more advantage of your hardware in the name of AI/ML experiences.
Those unfamiliar with WebNN can learn more via [2]this doc and [3]the GitHub project site .
Chrome 146 Beta also brings the Sanitizer API for providing safe and easy to use protections against any arbitrary user-supplied HTML content from causing script execution. The Sanitizer API aims to make it easier to build XSS-free web applications.
There are also a number of WebGPU updates, scroll-triggered animations, and other developer additions.
More details on Chrome 146 Beta via the [4]Chrome Releases Blog and [5]ChromeStatus.com .
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Chrome-145-Released
[2] https://chromestatus.com/feature/5176273954144256
[3] https://webmachinelearning.github.io/webnn-samples/
[4] https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2026/02/chrome-beta-for-desktop-update_01912553988.html
[5] https://chromestatus.com/roadmap
Chrome 146 has promoted WebNN to an origin trial in this release. WebNN is the Neural Network API for leveraging inference hardware acceleration of the client system where available. WebNN aims to let web applications and frameworks tap the underlying NPUs and/or other machine learning / hardware capabilities of the client system and its native operating system services. The hope with this WebNN API is providing a richer and more efficient machine learning experience on the web. Granted, not all will be happy about the notion of letting web sites/apps take more advantage of your hardware in the name of AI/ML experiences.
Those unfamiliar with WebNN can learn more via [2]this doc and [3]the GitHub project site .
Chrome 146 Beta also brings the Sanitizer API for providing safe and easy to use protections against any arbitrary user-supplied HTML content from causing script execution. The Sanitizer API aims to make it easier to build XSS-free web applications.
There are also a number of WebGPU updates, scroll-triggered animations, and other developer additions.
More details on Chrome 146 Beta via the [4]Chrome Releases Blog and [5]ChromeStatus.com .
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Chrome-145-Released
[2] https://chromestatus.com/feature/5176273954144256
[3] https://webmachinelearning.github.io/webnn-samples/
[4] https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2026/02/chrome-beta-for-desktop-update_01912553988.html
[5] https://chromestatus.com/roadmap