The worst part of traveling home for the holidays is traveling itself. There are so many hoops you have to jump through, the lines are long, and the delays are plentiful. What shouldn’t be a hassle, though, is being able to grab your boarding pass and get it on any device you’ve got on you. Google recognizes this, and not too long ago, the company made it possible toshare boarding and event passes on Google Walletto anyone with a custom link. It appears that Google is taking additional steps to make obtaining boarding pass information easier with a newly-added flag found on Chrome.
We talk a lot aboutChrome Flagsat Android Police. They’re a pretty handy feature that makes testing out new tools for end users easy. Fromchanging where the Omnibox location is on Chrome for iPhones, tochanging where the Omnibox location is on Chrome for Android, there’s a lot you can tweak about your browsing experience, regardless of what device you use. We promise there’s more than just changing the Omnibox location, and you can check out all you can do by typing this into the URL bar on your device:
chrome://flags
Code sleuth AssembleDebug from GApps Flags & Leaks on Telegram discovered that Googleadded a flag to Chrome Canaryin mid-November that flat-out indicates the company’s intent to make getting boarding pass information automated. Chrome Canary is a pre-beta version of the app that is specifically for developers and the like to try new features in Chrome before they are released to the public. The flag can be found on this build of Chrome by heading to the following link on Android, or by searching “Boarding pass detector” from the main Chrome flags page:chrome://flags#boarding-pass-detector
According to GApps Flags & Leaks, this feature will work by using Google’s predetermined list of airline URLs to check if there is any boarding pass data on an opened tab. That could be anything from bar codes to ticket numbers and so on. We think this could extend to more than just airlines and that people who have tickets for bus trips, train rides, and even monorail lifts could benefit from this. Now, what happens if Google detects this data is up to anyone’s guess, but it will almost certainly have to do with Google Wallet.
Back in October, Google finally let usersadd generic passes via photos and screenshots to their Wallet, making it possible to go completely ticketless upon entry to anything. When Google detects boarding pass data, it may add that data to a custom boarding pass into people’s Wallet app. That’s also what GApps Flags & Leaks thinks.
As always, Google products go through multitudes of version updates daily. Wallet just added in November the ability toadd your work ID, so you can leave your goofy-looking lanyard at home. Chrome goes through a very constant and consistent update schedule as well, andwe track everything that Google changes about it. Currently, we’re on version 120. To get the most out of your browsing experience with Chrome and Android, we’ve compiled a list often tips and tricks to improve your time spent with the browser.
