After years of rather annoying limitations for everyday use, Chrome for Android is finally catching up with Firefox in theinserting GIFs, stickers and images directly from the keyboard. Google is in fact working on integrating the function through a new experimental flag available in Chrome Canary, a first concrete sign towards native support for multimedia content in the input fields of websites.
A feature that’s been missing for too long may be coming to Chrome soon
Those who use keyboards like Gboard know well that, to date, inserting a GIF into a web form via Chrome is not possible, the browser literally blocks the attempt, hiding the GIF bar and showing the message This app does not support GIFs. Firefox, on the other hand, has allowed this behavior for years, so much so that many users had now perceived this absence as an absurd anomaly for the most used browser on Android.
However, the situation is changing, a has appeared within Chrome Canary named flag Enable IME content insertionwhich unlocks the display of the media bar on Gboard, making GIFs and stickers visible just as happens on the competing browser just mentioned.
At the moment the implementation is incomplete, the keyboard shows GIFs but when you try to insert them nothing happensto; in other words, Chrome has stopped blocking the keyboard-side option, but it still can’t receive and paste content into text fields.
We are therefore faced with a technical preview, useful above all to confirm that development is underway and that Google is effectively filling a functional gap which, in the era of communication visual firstis no longer sustainable.
Users interested in experimenting can already activate the new feature by simply opening Chrome Canary and typing in the address bar chrome://flags and look for the flag Enable IME content insertionactivate it and restart the browser.
Although practical use is still impossible, this operation allows you to verify the presence of the keyboard’s multimedia interface, which until a few weeks ago was completely hidden.
At the moment there are no official timings, Google has not yet communicated when the function will land in the stable Chrome channel; however, it is clear that the technical foundations have been laid and that final support will only depend on the full onboarding flow being enabled, probably in the coming weeks or months.
The support for inserting GIFs and images might seem like a minor detail, but in reality it represents an important evolution for the daily use of the browser; Social comments, web chats, and even feedback forms increasingly rely on visual languages, and this lack has slowed Chrome down for a long time.
