One of the most notable additions is the Language Detector API for Android, which uses Chrome's built-in machine learning model to identify the language of text. Developers can pass text through JavaScript, allowing the API to determine which language a passage is written in without sending the content to an external server.
Since processing takes place using a machine learning model installed directly on the device, the feature offers privacy advantages. If the required model is available, language detection can also work offline without an internet connection. Potential applications include automatically identifying the language of text entered by users and prompting them to use translation features.
Chrome 157 also expands CSS capabilities with the introduction of the new "corner" property. Developers can now specify the shape of an element's corners through a single declaration. Previously, corner rounding and corner shape had to be configured separately using "border-radius" and "corner-shape". The new property combines these settings into one declaration.
Additional properties targeting specific corners have also been introduced, including "corner-top", "corner-bottom", "corner-top-left" and "corner-bottom-left". The update also includes "corner-block-start" and other properties that define corners according to the text writing direction.
Changes to text display controls provide developers with greater flexibility. The CSS "text-overflow" property now accepts arbitrary strings, allowing custom wording such as "(continued)" to appear in text that extends beyond the available display area. Previously, developers commonly used "text-overflow: ellipsis" to display an ellipsis symbol at the end of overflowing text.
Another addition, "text-decoration-inset", allows developers to adjust the length of underlines, overlines and strikethroughs. This makes it possible to configure text decorations that end before the text edges or extend beyond them.
Chrome 157 also updates CSS "position-visibility" to support "anchor-valid" and "anchor-visible". The earlier plural forms, "anchors-valid" and "anchors-visible", remain available as aliases for compatibility. For anchor positioning, the browser has also implemented a specification under which "anchor-valid" evaluates only the default anchor.
Security improvements form another major part of the release. The HTML "Sanitizer API" now includes a "javascriptURLs" option, allowing developers to control how JavaScript URLs are handled during sanitization. Meanwhile, the Background Fetch API is now subject to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) restrictions, applying the same security policy used by the regular Fetch API. The change aims to prevent the circumvention of CORS rules and restrictions on access to local networks.
Several other web platform improvements are included in the update. "ProgressEvent" is now available in Service Workers, allowing developers to generate progress events with attributes such as "lengthComputable", "loaded" and "total".
The Web Bluetooth API has also been updated, with "BluetoothRemoteGATTServer" now inheriting from "EventTarget". This makes methods such as "addEventListener()" available for the interface.
Other additions include expanded APIs for dynamically inserting HTML, the introduction of "HTML-in-canvas" for rendering HTML within a canvas, support for "atomic-vec2u-min-max" in WebGPU, and the addition of "styleDuration" and "forcedStyleDuration" to the Long Animation Frames API.
The feature for displaying icon-only buttons in Capability Elements was still under review at the time of writing.
The release notes also list two origin trials: "Connection Allowlists - Embedded Enforcement" and "Overscroll Areas".
On the security front, Chrome 157 includes fixes for 213 security bugs. Google has scheduled the next stable release, Chrome 158, for November 17, 2026, local time.
The introduction of on-device language detection is a key development in Chrome 157, particularly for applications involving multilingual content and sensitive text. Processing language detection directly on a device reduces network traffic, improves response speed and provides an option for business applications handling highly confidential information without relying on cloud-based processing. It also gives web app developers additional ways to integrate translation and multilingual support.
The expanded CSS properties are expected to reduce the amount of code required for front-end development while offering greater flexibility in interface design. Combining corner shape specifications and allowing customised text-overflow indicators could simplify UI implementations that require precise adjustments. However, browser support for many of these features varies, making phased deployment and fallback methods important considerations for developers adopting the new capabilities.
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