Chrome 101 Release Highlights: FedCM API, Priority Hints, WebUSB Enhancements, CSS Font Palette, and MediaCapabilities Updates

Chrome 101 has been officially released, bringing a set of experimental and production‑ready web platform features aimed at improving privacy, performance, and developer control.

Federated Credential Management API (FedCM)

The new FedCM API enables privacy‑preserving federated identities without relying on third‑party cookies or other cross‑site tracking mechanisms.

Priority Hints

This feature allows developers to signal the relative importance of resources to the browser, helping to optimize the order in which assets are loaded.

Web USB sameObject Behavior

Instances returned from USBDevice accessors such as USBConfiguration , USBInterface , USBAlternateInterface , and USBEndpoint are now comparable using the === operator.

USBDevice.forget()

The newly added USBDevice.forget() method gives web developers a way to voluntarily revoke USB permissions that users have granted.

Deprecation of WebSQL in Third‑Party Contexts

Web SQL, originally proposed in 2009 and abandoned in 2010, is being deprecated and removed from third‑party contexts in Chrome 101, following its earlier removal from WebKit and lack of implementation in Gecko.

Font Palette

New CSS property font-palette lets developers select a palette from color fonts.

New CSS function hwb() specifies colors using hue‑white‑black (HWB) values in the sRGB color space.

WebRTC MediaCapabilities API

The MediaCapabilities API has been extended to support WebRTC streams, providing information about whether a configuration is supported and whether playback will be smooth, allowing sites to fine‑tune codec and resolution choices for video.