Chrome will launch Link Preview sooner rather than later, a feature whose name says it all and which, while nothing new, is really interesting. But you don’t have to wait for Chrome to incorporate it to enjoy it, and you don’t actually need to use Chrome to do it: Link Preview is extension that can do the same and much more… and there you have it, no previews worth it at the moment.

But let’s start from the beginning: where does the link preview come from? From one of those previews we publish from time to time that include news that the Chromium developers are working on. So this is a feature that will come to Chrome and most likely to the rest of the web browsers based on Chromium (Brave, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Vivaldi…). The discoverer of this curiosity is again the user leopeva64 from their Reddit and Twitter accounts.

Now, what is the link preview about? As I said, its name is apt: link preview without the need to click and thus enter the page. If you don’t know how the function will be used – if it’s simply by hovering over a link, if you have to press a key, etc. – the function it provides is obvious; and in terms of its technical background is explained in this development document. It would look like this:

Preview link

But it’s not possible to test it at the moment, so we’ll have to wait for that. And since you have to wait, you better wait until it appears in the stable version of the browser. Among other things, because there are extensions that can be used to cover the mentioned functionality. Link Previewer is the most complete of all and is available for Firefox in addition to Chrome – and other compatible browsers.

Link Previewer: preview, which is a gerund

Link Previewer is, as its name suggests, link browser. Once installed, it lets you predict the content of every link you hover over, though if that’s too much for you, it has plenty of options underneath. I mean the preview is done with a floating window and by default you just need to hover the cursor over the link, which might be overkill.

So the most important option of Link Previewer is the activation method, be that as it may automatic or manual: the first, the default, can be configured to preview more or less early, while the second will require a key to do the same along with a click. Which suits you better? It will depend on how you usually navigate your browser. Try to see which one convinces you more.

Link Previewer in action

Other Link Preview options include personalization set size and style of preview, enable and disable elements in preview, set floating window to stay visible, drag to place it where you want, show full URL, copy URL or content (text only) of page, take screenshot.. .Some of these options can be found in the extension’s preferences, others while using it.

But there’s more, Link Previewer allows you to use a block list that excludes sites from the preview function, add or not add viewed pages to the browser history, enable or disable the display of forms, pop-ups, running scripts… sure, other features it brings the extension is most interesting. But the best thing is that its operation is very fast compared to similar extensions.

Link Previewer doesn’t have many users, but it’s featured in the Chrome Web Store. If you want to see if it suits your needs, here are the links:

• Link Browser for Chrome
• Link Browser for Firefox