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Chromium Weekly Digest

Week 6 of 2026 (2026-02-05 to 2026-02-06)

Chromium Weekly: 2026 Week 6

Overview

This week's summary highlights an exceptionally high number of breaking changes across the Chromium codebase, requiring action from many developers and embedders. Key changes include a major rename of 'Private Network Access' to 'Local Network Access', a significant behavioral change to the Web Locks API's interaction with the back-forward cache, and numerous API breakages in core libraries, Android, and ChromeOS. This summary covers 1095 relevant commits out of 1412 total across 2 days.

Breaking Changes: API & Behavioral Shifts

  • ⚠️ BREAKING BREAKING CHANGE The 'Private Network Access' (PNA) feature has been renamed to 'Local Network Access' (LNA) across the codebase. This breaks public mojom interfaces in services/network/public/mojom/ and related C++ classes, requiring updates from embedders. (d28a1ec)
  • ⚠️ BREAKING BREAKING CHANGE A significant behavioral change now allows pages holding a Web Lock to enter the back-forward cache (BFCache). If a lock is requested for a cached page, the page will be evicted to release the lock, potentially breaking applications that relied on the old behavior. (91c1404)
  • ⚠️ BREAKING BREAKING CHANGE A failure to allocate backing store during array buffer deserialization will now crash the renderer process. This replaces the previous behavior of reporting a validation error and represents a major change to a core messaging mechanism. (c174943)
  • ⚠️ BREAKING BREAKING CHANGE Core libraries base, gin, gfx, and viz received numerous breaking changes. Notable changes include signature updates to base::PlatformThread::SetCurrentThreadType and viz::OverlayProcessorInterface::ProcessForOverlays, the removal of gfx::HasEquivalentBufferFormat, and a switch to base::span in base::UnixDomainSocket and gin::ArrayBuffer classes. (d6f9ce8) (99f35a8) (d570054) (e490adb) (0ebe3d5) (c75850d) (64a8baa)
  • ⚠️ BREAKING BREAKING CHANGE Several C++ interfaces now require subclasses to implement new pure virtual methods. These include TabListInterfaceObserver (OnAllTabsAreClosing), LocationBar, and OverlayBaseController. (3649dd0) (7665950) (bf95337)
  • ⚠️ BREAKING BREAKING CHANGE Several public Java APIs on Android were broken. The ui.base.ActivityResultTracker was refactored to a new ResultListener pattern, and recently added world-aware APIs in AwContents (Android WebView) were reverted and removed. (a89fef0) (eabd655)
  • ⚠️ BREAKING BREAKING CHANGE The AutofillManager::Observer::OnFieldTypesDetermined method signature has changed, requiring implementations to be updated to include a new bool small_forms_were_parsed parameter. (524d57f)

Web Platform

  • ⚠️ BREAKING BREAKING CHANGE The stable CSS property gap-rule-overlap has been renamed to rule-overlap. In new developments, layout support has been added for the margin-trim property on block and multicol containers, and the new :active-option pseudo-class is being introduced to style the active option in a <select> dropdown. (ba0e2f8) (8aeae6c) (6533e1a) (50f5662)
  • The Sanitizer API has been re-enabled by default, making it generally available to web developers for building robust cross-site scripting (XSS) defenses. (1de7ef7)

UI & UX

  • The Vertical Tabs feature continues to be refined, with updates this week adding up/down arrow key navigation, improving minimum size calculations, and fixing bugs related to Right-to-Left (RtL) layouts. (77abc8c) (84e78f6) (83ba73f) (b8f272c) (6224941) (833745a)
  • The video Picture-in-Picture (PiP) window now supports seeking forward and backward using the left and right arrow keys, improving user control over video playback. (eba95f7)
  • The window.setResizable(bool) API is now supported for standalone Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) that use tabs, giving developers more control over the windowing behavior of their applications. (c19b719)

ChromeOS

  • ⚠️ BREAKING BREAKING CHANGE The stable crosapi contract has been broken with the complete removal of the VideoCaptureDeviceFactory and VideoCaptureDevice mojom interfaces. Clients using these APIs for video capture on ChromeOS must migrate. (283767e) (a2b890e)
  • ⚠️ BREAKING BREAKING CHANGE A new allow-list now restricts the creation of custom icons in the Ash status area. Calls to StatusTray::CreatePlatformStatusIcon for unlisted icon types will now fail, breaking clients that previously added custom status icons. (88db807)
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