Material Design is making its way into every aspect of your Google experience. Android apps are getting updated with Material Design touches by the droves. Google has been slowly working the new design scheme into the Chrome browser for months. The latest change to hit Chrome is on the New Tab page, and it makes the larger, squarer website previews that replace the smaller, rectangular previews we have now. Step by step, Google is bringing Chrome and all of its other apps into the Material Design fold.
This new Chrome New Tab page is only available in the developer channel, but it should be rolling out to the beta channel and then the stable channel in the near future. This is a small update, but one that makes an immediate visual impact. It also makes it easier than ever to preview the websites that you have visited recently, or those that you visit most frequently. Each of the website previews now has a box around it, too, which makes the speed dial section of the page bigger than it was before. Chrome has a new, extended Search box to match the wider speed dial area.
The Chrome for Android app got a Material Design makeover in September, and the desktop version has been seeing small updates since last summer. The beta channel got the new Enhanced Bookmarks feature recently, and Chrome OS has been getting a bunch of small Material Design updates. There was also a new Incognito Tab page in Chrome 36 a little while back. Google is slowly but surely bringing all of their apps up to date with their current design guidelines.
Chrome stable users shouldn’t have long to wait for this update, and those of us in the beta channel should have even less time to wait before seeing this change. Not all of Google’s recent changes to Chrome have been popular with users, but this one is simple. I like it a lot and can’t wait to see it move from the dev channel to everyone else.