Smartphone screens seem to be getting bigger and bigger. Your hands probably aren’t. So if developers want you to be able to interact with their apps using a single hand, they’re going to need to adjust.

And that’s what Google is doing: the latest Chrome Dev browser for Android has moved the navigation from the top of the screen to the bottom, making it easier to reach when holding a big-screen phone with a single hand.

When you first open the browser, the location bar is that the bottom of the screen, along with the tabs icon and three dots you can tap to open other settings.

Tap the location bar and it’ll move to the top of the screen to make room for the on-screen keyboard. One you open a website, the location bar returns to the bottom of the screen again, and disappears from view when you start scrolling. But it will reappear if you scroll back.

There’s also a new half-screen view that makes it easy to reach thumbnail icons for your most frequently visited sites, or view downloads, bookmarks or history. Just swipe up from the location bar to have it fill half the screen. From that view you can also swipe up again if you want to switch to a full-screen view for your history, home, or other tabs.

The half-screen view is also what you’ll see when opening a new browser tab.

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3 replies on “Google moves Chrome for Android navigation to the bottom (Dev Channel)”

  1. What happened to making things options, y’know, customizability and stuff? I have giant hands, so catering to people who buy phones larger than they can handle doesn’t really sit well with me.

  2. I don’t think I like that. Normally when you load a page the address bar is still visible at the top, when you start scrolling down the page moves up, as does the address bar as if it’s sitting at the top of the page. It makes it very clear that scrolling up will bring back the address bar.

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