Most of you probably already know that you can close all tabs in Chrome for Android app at once, but you need to tap on the three dots while in the tabs menu, and then hit the “Close all tabs” option. Well, according to a new report, Chrome for Android may actually provide you with an icon to close all tabs at the same time, and that icon will be located in the tabs menu, where you’d expect it to be. This feature has been requested by a ton of users to this day, and is long overdue. In any case, Chrome Story noticed that the change may be coming based on a change in a code commit: “[Duet] Three button tab switcher bottom toolbar” entry was spotted, along with the following explanation: “This CL makes the tab switcher bottom bar have three buttons: close all tabs, new tab, and menu buttons”. In fact, the source even provided a first look at the “Close all tabs” icon, that image is included in the gallery down below, along with a screenshot of the design of the aforementioned toolbar which will include that icon. So, in this new layout, the “Close all tabs” icon will be on the left, a “+” icon to open a new tab will be in the center of this new toolbar, while a three-dots icon will be included on the right for more options. Chrome Story managed to get the provided screenshot thanks to a bug associated with this code change, as this change is not yet available in Chrome Canary, but it may become available in the near future.
Background: Now, some of you may wonder why does it say “Duet” in the code commit, well, that’s the name for Google’s bottom bar in Chrome. That project was first known as “Duplex”, but Google decided to change the name of it, probably because it wanted to differentiate it from the Duplex feature in Google Assistant. In any case, Duet basically stands for a bottom bar in Android, and as you can see, that bottom bar will see some changes moving forward. Up until now, it looked exactly like a top bar in Chrome, but things will change, and Google will probably stick to that bottom bar moving forward, though it remains to be seen if the company will provide an option for users to default to a top bar.
Impact: The change to a bottom bar makes sense as phones these days are quite large, and accessing all the necessary options in Chrome will be much easier if they’re right there where your thumb is. Many browsers for Android already default to a bottom bar, well, most of them, so this is not exactly surprising. It remains to be seen if Google plans to add some extra features to Chrome, aside from the “Close all tabs” icon, but we’ll see. It is still unknown as to when Google will add this icon to its browser, as the option is still not available in Canary, it’s safe to assume that Google has yet to properly test it, which means it may not arrive to a stable version of Chrome as soon as some of you may hope.
