The latest version of Chrome on Android has started rolling out a new price tracking feature to alert you about price drops. SmartDroid reports receiving the new feature in Chrome version 90, though it doesn’t seem to be live for everyone. Once activated, Chrome monitors your open tabs for any price drops, and sends you a notification if any happen.
It could be a useful bit of functionality for the Android app, which isn’t compatible with price tracking extensions like Keepa that are available for Chrome’s desktop client. But the requirement that you keep a tab open in order to track its prices seems clunky. Hopefully Google finds a sleeker solution before the feature gets a widespread rollout.
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If your version of Chrome has been updated with the feature, you can turn it on via the three dot settings menu in the top right of the tab select screen where it’s listed as “Track prices.” If it’s not appearing, Android Police and 9to5Google report that you may be able to manually enable it by going to “chrome://flags/#enable-tab-grid-layout” in the address bar, tapping into the drop down menu, and selecting “Enabled Price notifications.” Your browser may need to be restarted again before the feature appears. The technique doesn’t work for everyone however, since we weren’t able to enable the feature using this method.
News of Chrome’s price tracking feature comes just months after Microsoft’s Edge browser added a price comparison tool, which was shortly followed by built-in support for coupon and promo codes. Firefox also trialed a price tracking feature back in 2018 called Price Wise; though it doesn’t appear to have ever received an official release since.
