What you need to know
- A new discovery in Google Chrome Beta reveals a highly requested feature.
- Like Safari, Google Chrome for iOS lets you change the position of the omnibox.
- Chrome Beta iOS users can only enable this using the Chrome flag and then long press the URL bar to rearrange it.
Google seems to be preparing some nice changes to Chrome’s address bar, but it’s limited to iOS users.
As The Tape Drive (via 9to5Google) points out, the ability to move Google Chrome’s URL address bar to the bottom pane is possible by simply adjusting a Chrome flag. However, it is currently available for Chrome beta testers on iOS who have enrolled through Apple’s Test Flight program.
iOS beta testers have access to .chrome://flags/#bottom-omnibox-steady-state” URL on each Google Chrome browser.
Enabling the flag will restart the browser, after which users will be able to find the new “Address Bar” option in the app’s settings. The user will now be able to set the omnibox to the bottom. This is useful for large screens and makes it easier to edit the address bar without having to stretch your hands as you would with the top position.
The shared screenshot also shows that users can change the address bar position by long-pressing on the address bar instead of messing with the settings. The other New Tab, All Tabs, and Back and Forward buttons are placed directly below the URL bar when set to Bottom.
Of course, this feature is still in development. Nonetheless, it’s nice to see Google bring the most requested feature back to Chrome, even though it started with iOS. Hopefully, once the official rollout of this feature starts moving out of beta on iOS, we can expect it to come to Android devices as well. Google has been seen testing UI changes for Android in the past, but unfortunately they never saw the light of day.