Following a Materials You-themed redesign of the cellular model of Chrome, Google is now engaged on a giant design refresh for the desktop model of its browser. There may be yet another variant of the browser, although. Google additionally affords a devoted Chrome interface for tablets and foldables. On steady model 112, the corporate is enabling a redesign tab strip for some customers, and it’s yet one more design than what we’re getting on desktop computer systems as soon as the work on the 2023 is completed.
As we noticed on one of many foldables we’re presently testing (keep tuned for our Tecno Phantom V Fold evaluation), the brand new interface rolls out robotically, possible based mostly on a server-side change. The redesign eliminates the file cupboard design that led to the “tab” title within the first place, as an alternative simply highlighting the presently energetic tab with the identical gentle blue background colour which you can additionally see on the tackle bar. The opposite tabs are separated by a light-weight line. When you go a sure variety of tabs, the strip turns into scrollable. The interface additionally helps Materials You theming, with the blue accent colours being changed by no matter Materials You theme you are presently utilizing.
The brand new look vs the previous look under
The brand new design appears like yet one more variation, as there are some key variations to the large redesign Google desires to carry to desktops later this 12 months. The present iteration of the desktop redesign nonetheless retains the tab look of the tab bar intact, including a connection between the tackle bar and the tab that’s presently energetic. It is attainable that Google’s long-term objective is a desktop interface extra according to this pill variant, however solely time will inform.
After some digging, we came upon that the redesign is managed by at the least one flag, chrome://flags/#enable-tab-strip-redesign, which we might use to toggle on and off the redesign on our unit. It’s attainable that you simply additionally must manually change the chrome://flags/#enable-tab-strip-improvements to make it work correctly. We additionally discovered that absolutely restarting the app as soon as extra after utilizing the Relaunch button on the Chrome flags web page.
The desktop redesign because it presently appears on Chrome Canary 114
Total, the redesign is way welcome and makes the foldable and pill interface look rather more according to the redesigned Android model. It is clear that it is modeled after it reasonably than the desktop model, with the Chrome interface for all three kind elements now wanting distinct.