X
Google Search Term Chips Add Rapid Re-Search To Chrome Tab Switcher

Google Search Term Chips Add Rapid Re-Search To Chrome Tab Switcher

By Daniel Golightly
April 15, 2020

Google appears to be preparing a new way for users to discover and explore search with the addition of tab switcher search chips in the Android version of Chrome. The newly spotted UI element was initially shared on Twitter by Prajjwal Porwal. It appears to be part of a wider experiment centered around Chrome’s tab switcher on Android.

Summarily, the feature adds a small button to Chrome tabs indicating a search term that was used to find the page that’s been opened. That comes with a search icon for most users.

Users simply need to open a new tab or otherwise perform a search in the URL Omnibox. Then they need to click on a link on the results page. Afterward, navigating back to the tabs UI via the numbered-square icon at the top-right-hand side will show the chip in the thumbnail for the page.

Clicking on that button returns users to the search page. The button remains in place and accessible even after users have navigated around the page in question. It serves as an easy way to go back to search if a different, related site or page is needed. Clicking it returns the user to the search indicated.

Search chips are a Chrome flags experiment for now

Now, this is an experimental feature but, as noted above, it’s also part of a larger UI change that’s coming to Chrome for Android. Namely, that’s the addition of a scrollable grid UI in the tab switcher instead of a scrollable list. That’s shown up since at least May of 2019 behind a setting adjustment at the “chrome://flags” URL. There have been, in the interim, a variety of options for adjusting the grid layout.

The grid layout used here places open tabs behind square thumbnails, side-by-side in two-column rows. The flag itself, found at the above-mentioned URL via a search for “tab grid layout,” now has a new option dubbed “Enabled Search term chip.”

That turns on this new feature once the browser has been restarted. And it works in every version of Chrome for Android.

Is this coming soon and what else could it bring with it?

As noted above, the changes are still in their experimental testing phases, so accessing them requires moderately tech-savvy effort. At least for most users. But the tweet does indicate that the Twitter user in question didn’t need to activate any of the flags noted earlier.

Specifically, that’s reportedly in the Dev version of the Chrome app. And it comes with Google’s “G” icon instead of a search icon.

The implication of that, of course, is that this feature is rolling out to a wider testing audience without the need for a flag. Just about everybody else, even in Chrome’s testing channels, is going to need to activate the flags. But testing outside of the flags means that Google is at least considering pushing it out to a wider audience.

That has secondary implications too. One other feature linked to the new grid UI is tab grouping.

That feature will allow users to create renamable groups of tabs for better organization. It should prove especially useful when dozens of tabs are open. But that still appears in developer channels under this flag and not in the stable channel. So Google may or may not launch that alongside the new search term chips.