You might think of Chrome for mobile as a scaled-down version of Google’s desktop browser, designed for quickly browsing the web while doing all your serious work just on your computer. While Chrome for desktop will probably always be more capable, Chrome for mobile has its own powerful features that you should explore. Once you’ve adapted to its clutter-free home screen, you’ll find a browser where organizing and pinning tabs is intuitive, blocking notifications is easy, and every website opens in dark mode.
Use pinned tabs to keep track of important pages
Option to pin tabs to overflow menu. Below: Pinned tab section.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
On desktop, you may be accustomed to pinning tabs to get quick access to important pages. For example, I always keep Gmail and Trello pinned to my default browser. This keeps the bookmarks bar and bookmark folders free for link organization. But Chrome for Android and iOS lacked this feature until now fairly recently. If you didn’t know you could do this, now is the time to start pinning tabs on your devices, especially when it comes to tablets.
However, pinning tabs in Chrome for mobile is a little different than on desktop. After opening a page you have to open it tab Menu. Then, tap and hold a page and tap pin tab button. Pinned tabs appear in a special pill-shaped “Pinned Tabs” section below the tab switcher. Tapping on one will take you immediately to the pinned page. a perk? When you close all tabs due to tab overload, pinned tabs will not disappear.
Prevent tab overload by closing old inactive tabs
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Safari on iPhone automatically closes tabs older than 30 days. Chrome has something similar to Chrome for Android, but the feature is surprisingly limited on the iOS version.
By default, any tab you don’t use for 21 days is automatically moved to “Inactive Tabs.” You’ll find this section tab at the top of the page. This means that when you open the main Tabs screen, you will only see the tabs you have used most recently. But just because inactive tabs have been deleted doesn’t mean they’re gone. If you have hundreds of inactive tabs cluttering things up, it’s time to close them manually. Go to the Inactive Tabs section, tap close all inactive tabs button, and confirm with the popup. Any time the list gets too crowded, go in and clear it out.
However, Android users get a Safari-like option to automatically close any tab that hasn’t been active for more than three months (iOS users don’t have this option yet). Go settings > Tabs and tab groups > go to inactive session and make sure Turn off inactive items automatically The feature is enabled.
Move Chrome’s address bar down
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Talking about Safari-like features, Chrome now has the option to move the address bar to the bottom of the screen on both Android and iPhone. This is great news for anyone who uses a huge phone like me. (Why Google doesn’t switch this to default, I’ll never know.) To move the address bar down, simply tap and hold the address bar, then tap move the address bar down button. In future, there will be no need to stretch your fingers to switch to another website.
Use “Send to your device” to open your mobile links on desktop
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If you use Chrome on both mobile and desktop, you can use a little-known feature to send any link from your phone to the Chrome desktop app. On your smartphone, tap share Press the button and select send to your device Option. From the list, select the Chrome browser where you want to send it, and tap send to your device button. The next time you open Chrome, you’ll see a popup saying that a page was shared from one of the devices. click on open in new tab To resume reading or working on a website on your computer.
Prevent websites from spamming you with notifications (Android only)
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Spammers love to abuse the Chrome notification system for Android. Every random website you visit wants to send you alerts, and if you tap “Allow” even once, you’ll have dozens of notifications a day. Luckily, Chrome has an option that also prevents all sites from presenting popups to enable notifications. Go settings > site settings > Notifications and switch to Don’t allow sites to send notifications. Websites will not be allowed to ask you for notification access, and they will also not be able to send you notifications. If you want to keep the feature enabled, you can also disable notifications on a per-site basis from the section.
Set up your phone to work with picture-in-picture on any website
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Picture-in-picture isn’t just for YouTube and media apps. Chrome supports this feature natively on both Android and iOS. This means you can tune into a video from any website, and watch it in a small floating window, whether they have a dedicated app or not. As long as picture-in-picture is enabled on your phone, all you have to do is open video playback, and go to the home screen. (This also works with YouTube, but only if you’re paying for YouTube Premium.) On the iPhone, you’ll also see a PiP button in the native video player, which will automatically close the app, and bring you to the home screen with the video playing in a floating window.
If picture-in-picture isn’t enabled, you can set it from the Settings app. On Android, go to Apps > special app access > picture in Picture > chrome and enable “Allow picture-in-picture“Feature. On your iPhone, go to settings > General > picture in Picture and make sure Start PiP automatically The feature is enabled.
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Use this setting to force any website into dark mode
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If you use dark mode on your phone, you may be blindsided when you open a news site that only offers a light theme. But here’s a simple solution: you just need to enable an experimental feature that puts all websites into dark mode with a black background and white text (without affecting any media or images).
Go to Chrome address bar and press “Enter”chrome://flags.” search for “dark“From above.” Auto dark mode for web content Options, tap the drop-down and switch Activethen tap relaunch Button to restart Chrome. It works on both Android and iOS.
Lock Incognito Tabs When You Quit Chrome
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Secret tabs are private for a reason, and yet, they’re just as accessible as your standard tabs. Luckily, Chrome has a feature that can automatically lock incognito tabs when you leave the browser – again, something that should be enabled by default.
On Android, go to settings > Privacy and Security and enable Lock Incognito Tabs When You Quit Chrome. Verify using your fingerprint or passcode to enable the feature. On iOS, the steps are slightly different. Go settings > Privacy and Security > hide secret tab. Here, you can either choose to hide the tab after 10 minutes, or, even better, use Lock instantly with Face ID option For safe passage.
Remove the Discover feed and customize the start page
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Chrome’s start page can be a bit large, especially on iOS. What you want is quick access to the address bar or search bar, but that’s what’s furthest to reach. Instead, you’ll find sections of your Top Sites, Card Suggestions, and, of course, the Discover feed, where Google shows you all of your articles. It is possible be interested in.
Thankfully, this start page is customizable, and you can disable all three sections to keep things clean and simple. Tap “Edit” from the top-left corner of the new tab page, and disable each feature you no longer want to use. When all features are disabled (and you’ve switched to a quiet background), you’ll probably find that the New Tab page is more useful.
Join the beta to test new features early
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If you like to keep up with technology, you can test out new Chrome features before anyone else gets their hands on them, whether you have an iPhone or Android. On iOS, it’s as easy as installing Google Chrome Beta from TestFlight App. If you already have the app installed, the beta version will replace the stable app. On Android, go to Google Chrome beta testing siteLog in with the Google Play account you use on your smartphone and select become a tester. Once enrolled, you will get an update for Chrome that will switch you to the latest beta version. If you want to quit the program and revert to the stable build, go back to the same website, and use quit program button.
