Chrome’s 2023 Refresh continues to take shape with a new ‘Power Bookmarks’ visual card layout

“Material You all the things!” That seems to be Google’s motto this past year, doesn’t it? Starting with its Android and iOS apps, and moving into its web apps, no corner of the company’s ecosystem seems untouched by this gorgeous, new design language. Chrome is the latest to receive an overhauled visual update, and it began with the “Super Secret Chrome 2023 Refresh“, according to its developers.

We gave you a first look at this not-so-secret refresh for the new year, and it featured more rounded corners for buttons and text fields, a slick two-tone design for practically everything, and updated buttons and toggles among other things.

Now, as reported by our friend Leopeva64 on Twitter, an additional piece to the puzzle for reimagining the popular web browser is an update to the Side Panel which converts your bookmarks into cards for easier viewing. This modernized approach to bookmarks and folders is called ‘Power Bookmarks‘ – something I’ve discussed in the past.

In addition to a new look, Power Bookmarks will give you new ways to sort your content to find what you’re looking for faster, track prices on product pages across the internet, and more. According to Leopeva64, this same visual overhaul will also affect the Side Panel’s Journeys feature for clustering your search history into understandable groups based on topics, the Reading List, Notes, and more.

While we’re currently uncertain about when Google will officially announce and roll out Power Bookmarks, one thing is for certain – it’s toying with something it’s failed to modernize several times in the past. Instead of fundamentally changing how bookmarks work and forcing people to like it, Power Bookmarks seeks to add layered and useful functionality on top of the traditional system to help them become more useful. I’m betting this will even be able to be toggled off for those who just want their plain text bookmarks like before.