Earlier this year, an anti-trust lawsuit in Russia led Google to make some changes with Chrome on Android. The settlement required Google to develop a search widget that uses any search engine, which shipped as part of Chrome 60. Chrome also now asks users in Russia to pick a search engine when first installed. In a related move, Google is adding support for custom search engine logos in Chrome for Android.
Read MoreChrome's new tab page might be getting "Site Exploration" categorized content
Google's Chrome team often experiments with different UI changes, with some ending up in the stable release and some not. "Chrome Home UI" recently made its debut, with its rounded elements and bottom nav bar. The latest feature to be tested on Chrome Canary introduces categorized content on the new tab page.
Read MoreHow to customize Chrome's terrible New Tab page
Back in Chrome 54, Google replaced Chrome for Android's New Tab page with a new design that prominently featured suggested content - much like Google Now's feed. To quote Douglas Adams, "This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." Switching to the old design was possible by disabling a few Chrome flags, but the recent Chrome 58 update removes this ability.
If you're not a fan of Chrome's cluttered New Tab page, there are a few workarounds you can try to make it a bit more usable. You can even mix and match features to create a more personalized design.
Read MoreChrome Dev 59 changes the New Tab Page yet again [APK Download]
Google can't seem to make up its mind - at least when it comes to Chrome's New Tab Page. It received a massive change in Chrome 54, and was further altered in Chrome 56. Now, once again, the page has been updated in Chrome Dev 59.
Read MoreChrome Has A Popular Sites Flag So Your New Tab Page Doesn't Look So Lonely And Barren
If you haven't yet filled up your New Tab page with icons from frequently visited websites, then Chrome has the perfect flag for you. Digging into the chrome://flags page, you'll find an option under chrome://flags/#enable-ntp-popular-sites that will pre-populate the New Tab page with eight popular websites so it doesn't look as empty.
Many Chrome For Android Stable Users Are Now Seeing The Eight-Icon New Tab Page
Google likes to tinker with the UI of the mobile version of Chrome's user interface in the Dev and Beta versions of the app. Not every change we spot in these versions makes it into the standard, stable version of Chrome, but the changes to the New Tab page that we saw back in August seem to have made their way to the front. We're getting tips and reports from dozens of Chrome users that the UI change, which swaps out six website thumbnails for eight site icons instead, is now live.
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Chrome Beta And Chrome Dev Get The New Icon-Focused 'New Tab' Layout On Lollipop And Later
Want to see something new in Chrome for Android? Aside from essentially unlimited websites, of course. If so, and if you're using Android 5.0, 5.1, or the 6.0 preview, then download either the Beta or Dev version of the browser. Then go into the Settings menu and disable "merge tabs and apps." Now, go back to the main browser window, open the hamburger menu, and tap "new tab." Wey-hey, you've got a new interface to check out.
Left: new tab in Chrome. Right: new tab in Chrome Beta/Dev after disabling merged tabs.
The new standard swaps out the frequently-visited website thumbnails you're probably familiar with for icons, which are simply letters with some fancy background formatting.
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You Can Now Enable Large Icons For Most Visited Sites On Chrome's New Tab Page Using A Flag
In March we covered work the Chromium team has been up to that changes the way most visited websites appear on Chrome's new tab page. Instead of a grid of (largely blank) thumbnails, the browser can display large icons instead. At the time, users had to force the feature while running Chrome Canary. Now you just have to toggle "Enable large icons on the New Tab page" at chrome://flags/#enable-icon-ntp.
The feature is still in development, but it's stable enough to use. Right now Chrome only displays icons for websites that have images large enough not to look blurry. Those that don't pass this bar show a gray block containing the first letter of the domain.
Read MoreThe Best Of AP
Chromium Team Currently Developing Experimental New Tab Page That Renders Large Icons Instead Of Thumbnails For Your Most Visited Sites
Chrome may be one of the most popular web browsers out there, but its new tab page still manages to look like an unfinished product much of time. That's because the browser takes screenshots of your most visited webpages and lists them in a 4 x 2 grid, only sometimes it doesn't have a screenshot to work with. In those cases, it leaves the square blank.
The Chromium team is currently working on a way to pretty things up. It has an experimental new tab page in the works that replaces these largely blank squares with high-quality icons. Here we see the feature on desktop, but presumably it will take effect on Android as well.
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Firefox Beta Reaches Version 26, Gets Redesigned New Tab Page, Improved Password Manager, And More
The latest version of the Firefox Beta has hit the Play Store, and it introduces a change to the new tab page that is sure to liven up your mobile browsing experience. As usual, top sites are presented as thumbnails on the default screen, but version 26 makes your history, bookmarks, and reading list all accessible with just a few swipes. It's an intuitive and attractive experience that easily trumps that offered in the stable version of the browser.
The update also introduces a new way to pin tabs to the home page, performances improvements on some NVIDIA devices, and, of course, bug fixes.
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