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Google Chrome has been king of web browsers for quite some time now, but the added features and functionality it has picked up over the years has led to parts of the browser becoming a bit crowded; especially on smaller screens or lower resolutions. If you’ve ever wished you could squeeze a little more browsing space out of your Chrome window without hiding all the useful stuff in the upper portion of Chrome’s interface, Google looks to be working on an answer.
What is Compact Mode for Chrome?
Compact Mode is a new experimental feature that aims to squish down Chrome’s UI a bit. It works by reducing the size of toolbars, buttons, and reducing extra space between elements, freeing up valuable pixels for actual web content. Think of it as a diet of sorts for your browser – a little less padding here, a tighter tab bar there, and suddenly you’ve got more room to breathe.
Right now, Compact Mode is in the early stages, but in the Canary channel of Chrome right now, you can get a sneak peek at what it looks like in its current form. Specifically, in the Chromium Repositories, Google has highlighted exactly where the trimmings are happening at the moment:
While these may seem like minor tweaks, they can make a surprisingly big difference, particularly if you’re working with limited screen space. Unlike the mobile version of Chrome, which cleverly hides interface elements as you scroll, the desktop version keeps everything in view. This can be helpful for quick access, but it also eats up valuable screen real estate. Compact Mode could help to strike a better balance for those with limited space to work with.
How to try Compact Mode now
If you’re eager to give Compact Mode a whirl, it’s currently available as a feature flag in Chrome (and ChromeOS) Canary; the very cutting-edge, experimental version of the browser. As always, approach Canary with caution as it can be, by its nature, notoriously unstable. For Chromebook users, you have to go through tons more steps just to get to the Canary Channel, but for those on Windows, MacOS or Linux, just download and install Chrome Canary and follow these steps:
- Open Chrome Canary
- Type “chrome://flags” into the address bar
- Search for “compact mode”
- Enable the flag and restart your browser
Compact Mode is still in its early days, but I like where Google is heading with this. If the experiment goes well and things are working smoothly, this should make it’s way down to the Stable Channel over time. For now, I wouldn’t put the cart before the horse. While I’d expect this to all work out just fine, in may be weeks before we actually see this feature arrive.
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