When you use Chrome for Android, it is time to wave goodbye to finger gymnastics

It took Google far longer than it should have, however the firm has finally made it possible to relocate Chrome’s handle bar to the underside of the display screen on Android. When enabled, this tweak shifts not solely the search bar itself, but in addition the house web page shortcut, the brand new tab button, the open tabs button, and the ellipsis (three-dot) menu button.

The rationale why this bottom-justified interface is such a helpful addition comes all the way down to practicality. It is merely simpler to work together with content material positioned close to the underside of a smartphone show, because it’s throughout the portion of the display screen that may be swiped and tapped at with out the necessity to carry out finger gymnastics.

Chrome’s present top-justified UI is a relic of a long-gone period in cellular computing, again when the original iPhone’s 3.5-inch show panel was thought of comically outsized by customers and business analysts alike. Within the years since, Apple has relocated Safari’s handle bar to the underside of the iPhone’s display screen, and even Microsoft jumped on the underside bandwagon, going way back to Web Explorer Cell 9 working on Windows Phone 7.

Google has truly supported the now-ubiquitous backside handle bar placement on the iOS version of Chrome since 2023, making its fashionably late entrance to the Android social gathering a head-scratching choice to say the least.

The right way to transfer Chrome’s handle bar placement

Fortunately, you do not have to dig via any settings to reposition the handle bar

To switch Chrome’s address bar to the underside of your display screen, observe these steps:

1. Make sure you’re working the most recent model of Google Chrome for Android (model 135.0.7049.80 or newer).
2. Launch the Chrome app from your private home display screen or app drawer.
3. Lengthy press on the handle bar, which is situated on the prime of the display screen by default.
4. Faucet on Transfer handle bar to the underside, and the complete UI will shift to the underside of your display screen.

I would not be stunned if, in some unspecified time in the future, Google altered Chrome’s handle bar place to be on the backside of the interface by default. It is an objectively superior placement that enhances accessibility on cellular, with out introducing any inherent downsides or compromises within the course of. It is stunning that it is taken the corporate this lengthy to carry the characteristic to its personal home-grown working system, however, as they are saying, higher late than by no means.