Chrome could soon notify users when products return in stock

Chrome may soon let users receive back-in-stock alerts on shopping sites with the new “In Stock Notification” feature.

When an item you’re looking to purchase on a shopping site goes out of stock, sites like Amazon usually let you hit the notify button, so you get an email or notification when the product is available again. To better assist users in Chrome with this situation, Google is working to bring a new feature.

Microsoft Edge and Chrome already offer several shopping features directly in the browser. Chrome includes Shopping Insights and price tracking, while Edge provides built-in tools such as coupons, price comparison, and price history. Chrome also supports saved payment methods and Google Wallet autofill integration.

Google Chrome also has a built-in price-tracking system that shows when a product price goes down. Google is now adding a separate system for availability alerts. The addition gives Chrome built-in support for both price drops and restock alerts on supported shopping sites.

Chrome prepares built‑in back-in-stock notifications for shopping sites

According to a Chromium Gerrit commit spotted by Windows Report, Google is adding this in the commerce component for Chrome on all platforms behind a flag that allows enabling or disabling in-stock notification detection and subscription.

“Enables detecting, showing, and subscribing to back-in-stock notifications on eligible product pages,” the flag description notes. The same flag covers what Chrome calls “detecting out of stock product, showing the user a notification, and allowing the user to subscribe to in-stock notifications.”

Until now, you needed to rely on browser extensions like Honey and similar add-ons to get this sort of support. At present, both Chrome and Edge include built-in price tracking. If the feature is released publicly, users may be able to choose between retailer notifications and Chrome’s built-in alerts for product availability.

Google is currently working on this new availability system, and there is no ETA on when it will be introduced to users in release builds.