Helium 0.15.5 update is out with faster split view and more zoom presets

The folks at Helium dropped a fresh update a few days ago for the browser as version 0.15.5. It’s a minor update, but still packs some noteworthy changes and improvements. The two that stand out are a snappier split view and a bunch of new zoom presets.

Let’s start with the split view change, because this is the one I noticed right away. Earlier, dragging and dropping a tab into split view had this annoying delay that made the whole browser feel like it was struggling. It almost seemed like Helium had some kind of performance issue.

Now the delay has been cut down to half a second, and the difference is night and day. It’s quick and responsive, and honestly I really like it. If you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing back-and-forth over browser speeds, little things like these do matter.

Apart from this, another noteworthy change is the addition of more zoom presets. It makes it easier to zoom in and out on pages when you have multiple zoom levels, rather than big jumps between them. So this update takes care of exactly that problem.

Then there are some other small changes behind the scenes.

The browser exposed some additional keyboard shortcut actions, which is nice if you like doing things without touching your mouse. And the built-in ad blocker got bumped up to uBlock Origin version 1.73.0, so ad and tracker blocking stays current. There’s also a new option to ignore your system proxy, plus a confirmation prompt when you try to open a whole bunch of links at once, which should save a few accidental tab explosions. The Thai translation got some polish as well.

As mentioned above, this is a minor release, but it’s still worth checking out if you use the zoom feature or split view regularly. Meanwhile, the team has been working on other improvements too, like the newly added Global Privacy Control option. They’re also testing an experimental feature that helps people bypass heavy internet censorship.

The developer even just teased an iOS app with an Android version on the way, so there’s clearly a lot brewing.

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