I hardly don’t update my Google Chrome as much as I should because I don’t frequently restart my Chrome due to having a shit-ton of tabs open. When I did however, I noticed a completely overhauled UI experience that goes against Chrome’s entire legacy. I especially noticed it in the tabs, awful, disgusting, what an abomination! It’s like they are trying to look like the other browsers. Starting with Chrome version 69 and up they are utilizing this new “Material Design” which a lot of programs seem to be moving towards. The new Mozilla Thunderbird looks just as awful as well..
As you can see the tabs just look so bloaty and childish. My old saying is if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. There is ZERO reason to change the design.. Also with the new design, the tabs take up more screen real estate so now my YouTube video player is MUCH smaller! Luckily though you can change a Chrome flag to get the old UI back.
Go to
chrome://flags
Then with the search bar search,
UI Layout
Then it should show “UI Layout for the browser’s top chrome”
“Toggles between 1) Normal – for clamshell devices, 2) Hybrid (previously touch) – middle point for devices with a touch screen, 3) Touchable – new unified interface for touch and convertibles (Chrome OS), 4) Material Design refresh and 5) Touchable Material Design refresh. Enabling #upcoming-ui-features forces the Material Design refresh option. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS”
Switch this dropdown to Normal.
There should then be a big “RELAUNCH NOW” blue button at the bottom, you will click that and it’ll restart your Google Chrome with the applied settings.
As you can see the old sexy UI comes back, and you’re on the latest Chrome version as well!
Some other tweaks you might want to do in the chrome://flags as well,
Smooth Scrolling: Disabled
Show Saved Copy Button: Enable: Primary
Tab audio muting UI control: Enabled
Disabling smooth scrolling will make scrolling instant and not laggy and slow. Showing saved copy button means if a page fails to load and you’ve been to that site before, it will give you the option to show the saved/cached copy of the site. Enable tab muting control will give you a speaker icon in the tabs that you can press when audio is playing to mute said audio. Very useful if there’s a tab that has a nasty advert playing or something.
Hope that helps, and I wish companies would stop pushing this new Material Design, flat design look on everything. It’s awful..