Exploring the New Compact Feature in Google Chrome’s Latest Trial

Google Chrome’s default design has a lot of padding, which is great for touchscreens and larger monitors, but not so much for smaller and lower-resolution screens. Google is now trying to fix that with a new ‘Compact Mode’ option.

Google is testing a new Compact Mode for Google Chrome on desktop platforms, which reduces the size of the browser’s toolbars and controls. The feature doesn’t appear to be fully functional yet—we tried toggling the feature flag in the latest version of Chrome Canary, and it only adjusts some of the toolbar spacing.

The commit message for the new feature explains how it will work. The bookmarks bar is reduced in size from 34 pixels high to 30 pixels, the padding between bookmarks bar buttons goes from 4 pixels to zero pixels, and the toolbar separator margin shrinks from 6 pixels to zero. The feature also shrinks the size of the tab bar, and padding between tabs and the new tab button is reduced from 6 pixels to zero pixels.

The changes might seem minimal, but every little bit of space helps on smaller screens, especially when Chrome’s interface on Windows, Mac, and Linux doesn’t become hidden as you scroll down a page, like it does on mobile platforms. The exact adjustments could be changed before the feature rolls out to everyone.

Mozilla Firefox used to have a similar Compact Mode, but it was removed in 2021 . Other browsers have tried other features to shrink the main interface. A vertical tab bar is available in Vivaldi and Microsoft Edge, which can help on wider screens, and Mozilla also plans to add it as an option .

Compact Mode is available as a feature flag in Chrome Canary, and it should roll out to the other Chrome branches over time. You can try it out by opening chrome://flags in the browser and searching for the “compact mode” flag.

Source: GitHub

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