Chrome 92 Beta landed last week and it brought a new button between the address bar and the tab switcher. For some users, the button was a shortcut to launch a new tab while it was a share option for others. However, it looks like Google was just getting started. There’s actually more to this shortcut.
Users in Chrome Canary 93 report that the button is, in fact, customizable. You will be able to choose what the button does – launch a new tab, open the share menu, or activate the voice search functionality. By default, Chrome will automatically select between these three options based on your usage. Perhaps that’s the reason why the button served a different purpose for different users on Chrome 92 Beta. With Chrome 93, Google will likely let users select what they want the button to do.
If you’re in Chrome Canary 93 (93.0.4536.2 or later), you should see these options in settings under Advanced >> Toolbar shortcut. If they are not live for you yet, you can enable them by activating the following two flags: chrome://flags/#adaptive-button-in-top-toolbar and chrome://flags#adaptive-button-in-top-toolbar-customization.
Chrome for Android prepares to add a new customizable shortcut in the toolbar
Google is constantly seen tweaking the Chrome interface with various a/b experiments. While some of those changes roll out to the public, a few others never see the light of day. With Chrome 92 Beta, the company introduced a Google Lens camera shortcut to the Chrome toolbar. Additionally, it also introduced another shortcut button beside it, allowing users to quickly launch a new tab or pull up the share menu. Now, with Chrome 93, it’s preparing to make that shortcut customizable so users could select what they want it to do.
According to Android Police, the feature is “incredibly finicky” currently. The shortcut button automatically switches the selected option to voice search or sometimes disappears altogether. To be honest, that’s to be expected in the Canary channel. The feature should be more stable once it hits the Beta channel, or perhaps the public version.
Hopefully, this isn’t one of those interface experiments that Google suddenly decides to shelve. A shortcut in the toolbar for one of your most-used features will be a really nice addition to Chrome for Android. We will let you know if/when this feature rolls out publicly.
In the meantime, if you want to test it out in the Canary Channel, you can download the latest version of Chrome Canary from the Play Store. Click the link below. Note that the Canary version is highly unstable and certain features may not work as intended.