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Hard to believe it’s taken this long but it was last July when we discovered that developers were bringing Chrome’s “pull to refresh” feature to the desktop version of the browser. Since that time, we’ve not seen hide nor hair of the feature that will make the Chrome user-experience much more friendly for owners of 2-in-1 devices as well as the upcoming tablet and detachable Chromebooks.
This week, the ability to swipe down to refresh the Chrome browser has finally arrived in the developer channel of Chrome OS as well as Chrome Dev for Windows.
As reported by Engadget, a Reddit user discovered that feature hidden behind the flag chrome://flags/#pull-to-refresh and is working on Chrome OS as well as the Windows version of the browser.
Given the fact that the function has been in the works since last summer, I would suspect we will see it move to the Stable channel rather quickly in preparation for the release of devices like the yet-to-be-announced Acer Chrome tablet.
If you’re anxious to try out the feature now, you will need to move over to the Developer channel of Chrome OS or download the Developer build of Chrome for Windows if you are using a MSFT machine.
For Windows users, you are free to run the Developer build along-side Stable and just remove it at your leisure. For Chromebook users, please keep in mind that moving to Developer channel can bring with it a buggy user-experience and moving back to Stable or Beta will require a powerwash and the loss of any local data on your drive.
BACK UP YOUR STUFF!
To enable the flag, simply navigate to chrome://flags and search for “refresh.
Relaunch the browser and give that baby a swipe down to refresh content. Looking forward to this one landing on Stable as it will mean new form-factors will not be far behind.
Source: Engadget
