Recently, we’ve seen the “Merge Tabs” option in Chrome on Android go from being default when you install Chrome, to going away completely. In the latest developer build of Chrome for Android, the “Merge Tabs” option disappeared and now with the beta channel being bumped on up to build 51, we are seeing it disappear from the beta channel as well. Which means we’ll likely see it be removed from the next stable update to Chrome for Android. A bit unfortunate, but it was one of the few things users complained about with Chrome. Even though there was still an option to turn it off.
The “Merge Tabs” option would merge the tabs in Chrome into the app overview screen on Android. So when pressing the square button – on most smartphones – you would get all of your recently used apps, but also individual tabs. It was a bit confusing for many people that had plenty of tabs open in Chrome, especially if they wanted to jump between different tabs. As they’d need to go through their recents and search for it. Now this option was enabled by default, but could be easily turned off in settings. So it wasn’t a huge deal, really. And now, Google has decided to do away with it completely. A bit surprising, since some did like the option, and having the option there would still have been nice. Google could have easily just changed the default to having it disabled.
There doesn’t appear to be much else different in this latest beta build for Chrome on Android. Of course there are always a ton of under-the-hood changes in every new build. This version of Chrome should land on the stable version in about 4 to 6 weeks. So if you liked having your tabs and apps merged in Chrome, well your days are numbered with that feature. Unless Google somehow decides not to bring that change to the stable version. Which would be quite surprising. If you’re interested in trying out the Chrome Beta for Android, you can pick it up in the Google Play Store right now.