New Developer Features in Chrome 70: PWA Support on Windows, Credential Management API, and Named Workers

In Chrome 70, developers gain new capabilities across several web technologies. The browser now supports installing Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) on Windows desktop, allowing users to launch them from the Start menu just like native applications, with Service Workers ensuring fast and reliable performance.

The Credential Management API has been extended to support public‑key certificates, enabling web sites to use strong, cryptographic credentials for robust user authentication, including two‑factor verification with security keys.

Web Workers can now be given a name property via an optional constructor argument, making it easier to differentiate multiple workers that share the same script URL and to identify them in DevTools. Example usage:

const url = '/scripts/my-worker.js';
const wNYC = new Worker(url, {name: 'NewYork'});
const oSF = {name: 'SanFrancisco'};
const wSF = new Worker(url, oSF);

These named workers are already supported in Firefox, Edge, and Safari.

Additional Chrome 70 updates include Web Bluetooth support on Windows 10 for secure, privacy‑preserving device communication, the new Report-To HTTP response header and ReportingObserver API for sending intervention and deprecation messages, and various deprecations and DevTools enhancements.

Web Bluetooth now works on Windows 10.

Report-To header and ReportingObserver for server‑side reporting.

Important deprecations and removals are documented in the Chrome 70 release notes.

New features in Chrome DevTools are highlighted in the DevTools post.

For full details, refer to the original Chrome updates article at https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/10/nic70 .