Specifically, the company is looking to help users share information taken from across the web more easily. And in a way that’s more useful not only for adding context to the information. But also in a way that’s visually appealing and more apt for sharing via social media and apps. Although, it may not be the most intuitive feature around. Fortunately, that’s exactly what this guide is here for. To help you learn how to access not only the latest available text snippet sharing features, which take users to quotes directly on the source webpage. But also to discover upcoming shareable card features, which include text snippets from websites in a more visually-appealing format, complete with links to the featured text.
What are stylized web notes and why would you want to share them?
Now, as hinted above, shareable stylized web notes — as they’re called in Chrome — are effectively quotes from a website shared as a card-style image. Following on the trend of sharing quotes and memes via social media. But, in this case, they also serve as links to the exact text within a given web page. And that can serve several purposes. Not least of all, if the past several years have proven anything, it’s that snippets of text tend to be more quotable. Almost serving as micro-memes, especially when formated into images. So they can ultimately be much more impactful shared that way than as simple text. By including a link that goes directly to the source of the information quoted, conversely, users add even more power to the words. Namely, by providing an easy way for anybody to click over to where the information was. And effectively to see that information for themselves as well as better understand where it comes from. That makes the web snippets shareable via stylized web notes on image cards a potentially monumental feature — and one that everybody should learn how to use. Especially in this modern age of widespread misinformation and mined quote sharing. But also more simply as a way to share information without requiring the receiving party to dig for the exact details. And, of course, there are any number of other uses for this tool as well. So lets dig right in and see how this feature works in Chrome.
There are two ways to create web snippets, stylized web notes or not, in Chrome
Of course, Google isn’t solely working on a way to make web snippets shareable in the form of stylized web notes, as a card, in Chrome so it isn’t only important users learn how to share those. Chrome, on Android and beyond, also allows web snippets to be directly linked to by end-users. Shareable as a direct text quote and a link that takes users to that text highlighted. More importantly, the latter method isn’t currently confined to Chrome Canary. Although we’ll discuss that momentarily. And there’s every reason to believe that both will eventually be possible on desktop platforms as well. But that’s a topic for another day. In the interim, lets dig into just how both of these tools for creating a shareable card or direct links to text are used in Chrome.
How to create a shareable link directly to text in Chrome for Android
As noted above, the first method is much less involved and much less complex. It’s also a slightly older method, albeit still fairly new since it landed later on in 2021 and isn’t necessarily widely used or known. Summarily, allowing users to share a piece of text directly from a website. And a link directly to that text, which is highlighted by Chrome for the reader or recipient once the link is opened on any platform. Making it all the more useful for any number of purposes.
How to create a shareable card in Chrome for Android
To share a text snippet that provides a similar response when clicked or tapped by a user, but as a card-style image shareable directly from Chrome, you’ll need to start by making sure Chrome Canary is installed. The app is experimental, buggy, and free to use. And while it may not be the best choice as a daily driver, it’s presently the only place this feature is available. Once added, that’s the browser the following steps will need to take place in. That’s because, at least for now, this feature is tucked behind a flag we’ll activate first. After activating the flag, the remaining steps are fairly straightforward. And they should, if previous changes in Chrome are any indication, stay the same even when Google adds the shareable web notes card UI to the stable version of Chrome. So users should be able to return to this guide even after it is finalized for a refresher, should they forget how to share the snippets.
