Google has just released Chrome version 26.0.1410.43 to the stable channel, and chief among its list of changes is something that will please the error-prone: the in-browser spell checker sees several prominent additions, most notably the ability to distinguish between homonyms, check grammar, and perform context-sensitive fixes. Additionally, words added to the browser's custom dictionary can now be synced between Chrome installations with Google Sync enabled. For now, these improvements apply only to the Windows and Linux versions of Chrome, as well as Chrome OS. Google is "still working on Mac support" for the features—while OS X has its own system-wide spell checker, it obviously lacks the Chrome-specific features of Google's implementation.

Most of these features will only be available to users who have enabled the "ask Google for suggestions" setting in their browsers, which is done by right-clicking anywhere in a text field and drilling down to the "spell-checker options" menu. These suggestions use Google Search as a backend, which means you'll be sending your misspelled words anonymously to Google for its use just as you do when you use Google Search or the company's other products. Privacy-minded people might want to familiarize themselves with Chrome's privacy policy and settings before enabling the feature.

Chrome 26 also includes a few other modifications in keeping with Chrome's slow-but-steady approach to fixes and feature additions. On Windows PCs with multiple Chrome profiles, users can now create shortcuts to their individual profiles and place them on the desktop. OS X and Linux also benefit from Chrome's asynchronous DNS implementation, which seeks to speed up DNS prefetching, which in turn reduces the amount of time users have to wait for DNS resolution. Before now, asynchronous DNS had been included as an experimental feature, but disabled by default. Finally, the new release fixes several security bugs, all of which are outlined in the release notes.