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Chrome 135 for Android is beginning its rollout, and with it comes a subtle yet significant visual update that brings a more modern, edge-to-edge feel to the browsing experience on your phone. Previewed last month, this change affects how the gesture navigation bar at the bottom of your screen interacts with web content.
Previously, as you scrolled down a webpage, Android’s gesture navigation pill would sit atop a solid bar, which Chrome began theming last year to match the browser’s top elements. With this latest update in Chrome 135, as spotted by 9to5Google, that solid background disappears while you scroll down. Instead, the gesture bar now floats directly over the web content, creating a more immersive, edge-to-edge effect.
While this adjustment doesn’t dramatically increase the amount of the webpage you see at any given moment, it’s a welcome modernization. More and more Android applications are adopting this seamless, edge-to-edge aesthetic, and it’s good to see Chrome aligning with this design trend. It simply looks cleaner and more integrated with the operating system.
Interestingly, the solid background behind the gesture bar still appears when a page initially loads and you’re positioned at the very top. It also reappears as you scroll back up the page. The edge-to-edge magic specifically happens during the downward scrolling motion.
For now, this update is targeting mobile phones or “small-screen” devices utilizing gesture navigation. Google has indicated that support for larger screens, like tablets, is planned for a later date. It also appears this change is exclusive to gesture navigation; users still relying on the classic 3-button navigation won’t see this transparent effect, though arguably, that navigation method could also benefit from a similar treatment.
Chrome 135 should become widely available via the Google Play Store over the coming days. However, keep in mind that this specific edge-to-edge design change is rolling out independently as a server-side update. We’re seeing more users receiving this visual tweak this week, so even if you have Chrome 135, it might take a bit longer to appear on your device.
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