Summary
For years, the address bar in vanilla Google Chrome has stayed in the exact same place—at the top of your screen. For some, this isn’t ideal. And because of this, Chrome is finally getting one of its most widely requested quality-of-life improvements to date.
Google has begun rolling out a new customization option for its Chrome browser on Android, allowing you to relocate the address bar to the bottom of your screen. you may activate this feature in two ways. The most direct method is to long-press on the address bar, which will bring up a context menu with the option to “Move address bar to bottom.” Alternatively, you can navigate to Chrome’s “Settings” menu, where a new “Address Bar” section will allow you to select your preferred location—either top or bottom.
The reason why this is being done is pretty clear. Over time, our phones have increased in size and become taller. While the address bar has always been at the top, the fact that most phones are taller now means that either you need to use both of your hands or you need to do some serious hand gymnastics in order to be able to reach the phone one-handed. Or if you can do it, maybe you just have a really big hand. But the thing is, a lot of people were suffering because of this, since it’s not really easy to reach the address bar with your thumb all the time. Google stepped in with a fix. The bottom bar is much easier to reach one-handed, and once you get the grasp of it, it will greatly improve your browsing experience.
It should be noted that there are tons of browsers out there using bottom address bars, but this is the first time Chrome is doing it, and Chrome is the world’s most used browser, so this is a good way to make it catch on.
This is not the first time Google has experimented with a bottom-placed address bar in Chrome for Android. A similar feature, called Duet, wastested in the pastbut was later removed. The current implementation of the bottom bar has also been in testing for a while,since as early as last year.
The reintroduction of this option brings Chrome for Android in line with its iOS counterpart, which has offered a bottom address bar since 2023. Completely insane considering Chrome is basically a second-tier citizen in iOS and Google never thought to add it to the Android version, but to each their own.
The feature is available starting today, though it might take a couple of weeks before it arrives for everyone.
