You might think that Chrome for mobile is just a mini version of Google’s desktop browser, designed for quickly browsing the web, while all your serious work can only happen on your computer. While Chrome for desktop will likely always be more capable, Chrome for mobile has its own share of powerful features that you should explore. Once you customize its cluttered 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 in overflow menu. Below: Pinned tabs section.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
On desktop, you might be used to pinning tabs to gain quick access to important pages. For example, I always keep Gmail and Trello pinned in 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 fairly recently. If you didn’t know you could do it, it might be time to start pinning tabs on your device, especially when it comes to tablets.
Pinning tabs in Chrome for mobile is slightly different than on desktop, though. After opening a page, you’ll have to open the Tabs menu. Then, tap and hold on a page and tap the Pin Tab button. Pinned tabs show up in a special pill-shaped “Pinned Tabs” section at the bottom of the tab switcher. Tapping on one will instantly take you to the pinned page. One added advantage? When you close all tabs because of tab overload, pinned tabs won’t disappear.
Prevent tab overload by closing old inactive tabs
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Safari on iPhone automatically closes tabs that are older than 30 days. Chrome has something similar for Chrome for Android, but the feature on the iOS version is surprisingly limited.
By default, any tab that you don’t use for 21 days automatically gets moved to “Inactive Tabs.” You’ll find this section at the top of the Tabs page. This means that when you open the main Tabs screen, you’ll only see tabs that you’ve used recently. But just because the inactive tabs are tucked away, that 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 the Close all inactive tabs button, and confirm from the popup. Every time the list gets a bit too crowded, go in and clear it out.
Android users, though, get a Safari-like option to automatically close any tabs that haven’t been active for over three months (iOS users don’t have this option yet). Go to Settings > Tabs and tab groups > Move to inactive session and make sure that the Automatically close inactive items feature is enabled.
Move Chrome’s address bar to the bottom
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Speaking of Safari-like features, Chrome now has an 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 giant phone like I do. (Why Google doesn’t just switch this to the default, I will never know.) To move the address bar to the bottom, simply tap and hold on the address bar, then tap the Move address bar to bottom button. Going forward, there will be no need to stretch your fingers just to switch to another website.
Use “Send to Your Devices” to open your mobile links on desktop
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
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 the Share button and choose the Send to Your Devices option. From the list, select the Chrome browser where you want to send it to, and tap the 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 the website on your computer.
Block websites from spamming you with notifications (Android only)
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Spammers love to abuse Chrome for Android’s notification system. Every random website you visit wants to send you alerts, and if you tap “Allow” even once, you’re inundated with dozens of notifications a day. Luckily, Chrome has an option that blocks all sites from even presenting a popup for enabling notifications. Go to Settings > Site settings > Notifications and switch to Don’t allow sites to send notifications. Websites won’t be allowed to ask you for notification access, and they won’t be able to send you notifications either. 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 so Picture-in-Picture works on any website
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Picture-in-picture isn’t just for YouTube and media apps. Chrome also supports this feature natively on both Android and iOS. This means you can tune in to any website’s video, and watch it in a little floating window no matter if they have a dedicated app or not. As long as Picture-in-Picture is enabled on your phone, all you have to do is to open the video playback, and go to the home screen. (This works with YouTube as well, but only if you’re paying for YouTube Premium.) On iPhone, you’ll even 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 still playing in the floating window.
If Picture-in-Picture is not enabled, you can set it up from the Settings app. On Android, go to Apps > Special app access > Picture-in-Picture > Chrome and enable the “Allow picture-in-picture” feature. On your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Picture in Picture and make sure that the Start PiP Automatically feature is enabled.
What do you think so far?
Use this setting to force any website into dark mode
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
If you use dark mode on your phone, you might be use to being blinded when you open a news site that only offers a light theme. But there’s a simple fix here: All you need is to enable an experimental feature that forces all websites into dark mode, with a black background and white text (without impacting any media or images).
Go to the Chrome address bar and enter “Chrome://flags.” Search for “dark” from the top. In the Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents option, tap on the drop-down and switch to Enabled, then tap the Relaunch button to restart Chrome. This works on both Android and iOS.
Lock Incognito tabs when you leave Chrome
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Incognito tabs are private for a reason, and yet, they’re as accessible as your standard tabs. Fortunately, 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 leave Chrome. Verify using your fingerprint or passcode to enable the feature. On iOS, the steps are slightly different. Go to Settings > Privacy and security > Hide Incognito tabs. Here, you can either choose to hide the tabs after 10 minutes, or, better yet, use Lock Immediately with Face ID option for a safer route.
Remove the Discover feed and customize the start page
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Chrome’s start page can be a bit much, especially on iOS. What you want is quick access to the address bar or the search bar, but that’s precisely what’s farthest to reach. Instead, what you’ll find are sections for your top sites, card suggestions, and, of course, the Discover feed, where Google shows you all the articles you might 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 that you no longer wish to use. When all features are disabled (and you’ve switched to a calmer background), you’ll likely find the new tab page is much more useful.
Join the beta to test out new features early
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
If you like being on the bleeding edge of tech, you can test new Chrome features before anyone else gets their hands on them, whether you have an iPhone or Android. On iOS, it’s as simple as installing the Google Chrome beta from the TestFlight app. If you already have the app installed, the beta version will replace the stable app. On Android, visit the Google Chrome beta testing site, log in with the Google Play account you use on your smartphone, and choose Become a tester. Once enrolled, you will get an update for Chrome that will switch you out to the latest beta version. If you want to leave the program and return to the stable build, go back to the same website, and use the Leave the program button.
