Chrome‘s Reading Mode just got a new button tucked inside its settings menu. Google is quietly testing a translate option for the feature on Chrome Canary, the browser’s experimental testing channel where new ideas show up long before they’re ready for everyday use.
What does this new translate button actually do?
The option was first spotted by @Leopeva64, who shared a video demo on X highlighting the new button tucked inside Reading Mode’s dropdown menu. It exists alongside the controls for theme, font, images, and links, though it doesn’t actually do anything yet. Once this feature is live, clicking it would translate whatever page or PDF you’re reading into your preferred language, without leaving Reading Mode.
For now, clicking the button does absolutely nothing. Google appears to have added the interface piece first, well before building out the actual translation function behind it. If you need to translate a page today, the existing Google Translate browser extension already covers the same job just fine.
Is it rolling out to everyone on Canary?
Not quite yet, it seems. PiunikaWeb tested this on the latest Chrome Canary build, but the translate button was nowhere to be found. That mismatch suggests Google might be testing this in limited batches rather than pushing it to every Canary user simultaneously, or it could be a platform-specific rollout.
In the last few months, we have seen a bunch of other Chrome upgrades. Google overhauled Reading Mode into a fullscreen, distraction-free view earlier this year, and rolled out vertical tabs alongside it. The company also added split view, PDF annotations, and direct Google Drive saving. Separately, Chrome is working on native lazy loading support for video and audio, a change that could speed up page loads across the board once it ships.