Google Chrome is shoving previous search queries into your new tab page

4 min read Original article ↗
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Manuel Vonau was Android Police's Google Editor until April 2024, with expertise in Android, Chrome, Pixels, and other Google products. For five years, he covered tech news and reviewed devices after initially joining Android Police as a news writer in March 2019. He lives in Berlin, Germany.

Manuel studied Media and Culture studies in Düsseldorf, finishing his university career with a master's thesis titled "The Aesthetics of Tech YouTube Channels: Production of Proximity and Authenticity." His background gives him a unique perspective on the ever-evolving world of technology and its implications on society. He isn't shy to dig into technical backgrounds and the nitty-gritty developer details, either.

Manuel's first steps into the Android world were plagued by issues. After his HTC One S refused to connect to mobile internet despite three warranty repairs, he quickly switched to a Nexus 4, which he considers his true first Android phone. Since then, he has mostly been faithful to the Google phone lineup, though these days, he is also carrying an iPhone in addition to his Pixel phone. This helps him gain perspective on the mobile industry at large and gives him multiple points of reference in his coverage.

Outside of work, Manuel enjoys a good film or TV show, loves to travel, and you will find him roaming one of Berlin's many museums, cafés, cinemas, and restaurants occasionally.

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Google Chrome’s new tab page is probably the most visited place in your browser, ahead of any websites. Many people also have it set as their Chrome homepage. That’s why changes to this important part of the browser are not made lightly, and Google is careful not to change the formula too much. The biggest change to the page on Android was probably the introduction of the Discover feed, which added personalized news recommendations for you. Now, Google is experimenting with another addition: Quick access to recent searches.

Over the past few days, Google has been spotted activating shortcuts to recent search queries on the new tab page that have appeared for some of our contributors and tipsters. They live in your collection of most visited sites right below the new tab’s search bar, replacing some those shortcuts in the process. However, search queries can often be much longer than site titles, and they don’t have intuitive icons that could help you further identify what they are—there is just a generic magnifying glass for all of them. In some cases, this makes it nearly impossible to identify what you’re going to search for when your tap the shortcuts unless you remember what you typed out a day or two ago.

The experiment is controlled by the chrome://flags/#organic-repeatable-queries flag, which offers a few more layouts and options, including the ability to disable it completely. Its description makes clear how exactly the displayed search queries are selected by the browser: “Enables showing the most repeated queries, from the device browsing history, organically among the most visited sites in the MV tiles.” The drop-down menu allows you to opt for different approaches to the queries, making it possible to limit the number of tiles reserved for search to four or to allow for more than that.

While the experiment seems to be rolling out more widely right now, it’s not new. A Redditor showed off a similar look for their new tab page about two months ago, mentioning the above flag as an option to get rid of the suggested queries.

Every once in a while, Google pushes random a/b tests like this to users, and there's not much you can do to opt in or out other than manually overriding the flag. If you're interested in what's new in each version of Chrome, we've got you covered.

Thanks: Moshe and Armando