Chrome’s ‘Send Tab to Self’ feature finds a new home in the browser so you don’t miss a thing

Spotted by Leopeva64 on Twitter and Reddit, Chrome’s Send Tab to Self 2.0 feature now appears to be notifying users of content sent over from other devices via the browser instead of the operating system’s native notification delivery system. On Chrome Canary, the dedicated ‘devices’ icon will appear to the right of the Omnibox when a new tab is received from a user’s phone, laptop, or desktop. Check it out below.

Send tab to self 2.0

Enables new received tab UI shown next to the profile icon instead of using system notifications. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS Android

#send-tab-to-self-v2

Version 1.0 of the feature relied on the operating system to deliver tab notifications to the user, but in instances where this feature was disabled or toggled to ‘Do not disturb’, the tab recipient would never acquire said tab from their other device. Version 2.0 of the flag seeks to circumvent this entirely.

As you can see, the toolbar bubble disappears when the notification is addressed and appears once more when a new tab is received. As with all of Google’s design in Chrome and Chrome OS, features that are not relevant in the moment will disappear, and this luckily is no different. This means that if you’re not utilizing it at all, you won’t have to worry about it taking up any more space (I know that the tab search and Reading List features weren’t popular placements with everyone!)

There is something to be said for having such a thing appear in the notification tray instead of the browser. Normally, live or living content, or fresh content, as you can refer to it, should be placed in a location where it can be immediately consumed or addressed, and the browser header is generally utilized for storing content long-term – think extensions, Reading List, and so on. With that being said, this is a clever trick, but I don’t see it being a long-term solution. Regardless, with it being in the Canary channel, it’s a long while until it comes to all users, so we’ll continue to watch it develop for the time being.