Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google will begin the process of enabling its Privacy Sandbox APIs in Chrome 115 in the next few days.
- Google plans to initially enable the APIs on 35% of browsers and gradually ramp up from there.
- The company is aiming for 99% availability by mid-August.
You may not have noticed it, but Chrome 115 started rolling out earlier this week. While the new version of Chrome doesn’t come with any new features, it will get something to help you get rid of tracking cookies.
In a blog post, Google announced that it would start enabling Privacy Sandbox APIs in the next few days. Those APIs would roll out to a small percentage of users who have Chrome 115 installed and would gradually ramp up as time went on.
While it may seem antithetical to how Google operates, the company developed a plan to get rid of browser cookies with its Privacy Sandbox back in 2019. The privacy feature isn’t meant to completely stop advertisers from targeting audiences, but it is designed to limit the personal data that those advertisers get access to. In May 2023, Google revealed how it planned to ship Privacy Sandbox, stating that the process would begin in late July 2023. That day has finally arrived.
It appears that Privacy Sandbox will be enabled for 35% of Chrome 115 users initially, starting the week of July 24. The Mountain View-based organization will then slowly bring that total up to 60% by the start of August. And the company expects to get to 99% by mid-August, with the Privacy Sandbox Relevance and Measurement origin trial ending on September 20, 2023.
Chrome should automatically update to Chrome 115, so you don’t have to worry about that. But if you want to enroll, Google says:
To access the Privacy Sandbox relevance and measurement APIs on Chrome and Android, developers will need to complete the enrollment and attestation process. This will soon become a mandatory requirement for accessing the APIs, so we recommend you start the process as soon as possible.
For local testing, we are providing developer overrides from Chrome 116 with a Chrome flag and CLI switch:
Flag: chrome://flags/#privacy-sandbox-enrollment-overrides
CLI: –privacy-sandbox-enrollment-overrides=https://example.com,https://example.co.uk,…
Google says that if you’re enrolled before the trial period is over, the transition period should be seamless. The company also states that it plans to fully phase out third-party cookies by Q3 2024.