How to Get Your Old Chrome Back
Change is not to everyone’s taste. Some of us like things the way they are, damn it: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Unfortunately, staying stagnant won’t get you very far in most aspects of life, at least not in technology. Companies are always looking for new ways to promote their products or at least keep them up to date with the latest trends.
It’s the same with Chrome: Google has introduced a new design language for its hugely popular web browser, adopting the Material You user interface seen in other Google software products such as Android. Material You applies the UI color scheme to background images to create a more cohesive look. Additionally, the buttons and menus are more rounded since everything needs to be round these days.
New Chrome isn’t for everyone
I really like the changes (though I’m a pro-Safari guy when I can help it). However, if you hate the new Chrome, you’re not alone. Tom’s Hardware’s Avram Piltch despises it . Piltch hates the way the menu floats above the UI, the way folder icons and extension menus appear, and worst of all, the fact that the tab menu is now on the left side of the screen instead of the right. (Those of us who used macOS seemed to have avoided this latest change, since Google didn’t seem keen on shrinking the tab menu with left-aligned window control buttons.)
However, anyone who shares Piltch’s opinion is in luck: unlike many tech companies that force design changes on users with no way to go back, there is actually an easy way to flip the switch and bring back the old Chrome – at least for now. .
How to get your old Chrome back
To get started, copy and paste the following into the URL field in Chrome, then go to: chrome://flags/#chrome-refresh-2023 . This feature flag—an experimental feature hidden in Chrome—controls whether Chrome loads with the new redesign. If you haven’t tinkered with it before, it’s probably set to Default , which obviously allows you to change the design.
Click Default , then change the option to Disabled . Finally, click the Relaunch button that appears in the bottom right corner to update Chrome with your changes.