It’s been exactly a year since we first discovered that Google was planning to implement something called “Power Bookmarks” into the Chrome browser. Since then, the famous Side Panel has stolen the spotlight, Tab Groups have become widely used, Google Shopping has been injected into everything including the new tab page, and more. Loads of development on Chrome’s tools and features have occurred, and Power bookmarks have remained a mystery.
Well, that was true until today. Our good friend Leopeva64 on Twitter has discovered an update to our original findings, and it looks as though Google’s efforts on this feature have coalesced into something larger (or at least that the original idea of the feature is larger than we initially though!).
Power Bookmarks are back on the table and they will reside in the Side Panel with everything else that the company has stuffed in there this year. Additionally, the new feature will come with Edge-style “Private Notes” functionality as well as a Google Shopping “Products” section. This will probably be for products you’ve saved for later.
[WIP] Prototype for bookmarks++ side panel
Chromium Gerrit
Mentioned as a work-in-progress, the commit has already been merged, so it’s most certainly been accepted as an official feature that will soon be implemented. What’s interesting to me is that it’s being called “Bookmarks++” here as a code name. It’s no secret that over the years, Google has made several attempts to toy with your bookmarks, providing more organization, automation, and value to the sacred storage ground only to be shut down by users who prefer the simplicity of the classic feature.
Either way, Side Panel is becoming pretty jam-packed, and I hope that the recently discovered ‘customize’ feature that will also live there can be expanded to let you show or hide specific tools instead of just modifying the Chrome browser’s new tab page. Are you open to the idea of more powerful or useful bookmarks, or do you just want plain text links to revisit later?
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