Chrome's stupid new rounded look - You mean it's pretty? Or you mean it's Ugly?

Chrome's stupid new rounded look. If you want... Please post your vote in the poll or/and post your honest oppinion about the change in the thread if you want. Thanks

If you Hate it... How to guide below.

How get rid of Chrome's stupid new rounded look

By Betanews.com | 3 days ago

The celebrate the 10 anniversary of Chrome, Google pushed out version 69 of the browser complete with a new look. Many people find change hard to accept, and for some Chrome users, the rounded look that Google has introduced feels like a step back in time.

If you prefer the way Chrome used to look, you'll be pleased to hear that you're not going to be forced to stick with the redesign. There's a hidden setting that you can tweak to get things back to how they used to be.

See also:

• Have you seen Chrome 69? It's had a 10th-anniversary 'Material Design' refresh
• Google Chrome gets a 10th Birthday makeover
• Chrome starts to use native notifications in Windows 10

As this is a hidden option, there's no point looking in the main Settings section of Chrome as you'll just draw a blank. Instead, you will need to tinker with the chrome://flags page -- something we've looked at before as a way of making some major changes to Chrome.

Here's what you need to do to get things looking the way they used to:

1. Type chrome://flags in the omnibar and press Enter.
2. Use the search bar to find the UI Layout for the browser's top chrome setting.
3. From the drop-down menu, select Normal.
4. Restart Chrome.

 

I voted 'Yes' that I like it, but more accurately I don't mind one way or the other, I think it's what you get used to, and it's still just as usable - I figured a 'Yes' vote would be fairer & closer to the truth than a 'No' vote. This new Chrome build seems a little snappier in general web browsing, so I think they've tweaked page load times, etc, so all-in-all a good change to Chrome. It's useful though that you've shown how you can revert to the previous look of Chrome though, but how long we'd be able to do this I do not know - I'm thinking that eventually they will remove that option.

 

I had not seen it yet, but I do not allow Chrome updates (same as Windows, LOL) and that is probably why. But, I appreciate this post because the next time I do a clean OS install I will get the new version and will need to know how to correct it.

I also always prefer that aesthetics remain unchanged indefinitely, unless or until I decide I want a change, rather that have someone make that decision for me. I voted "no" in the poll. Checking out the link to see what the chatter is about, I do think it looks really stupid, like some piece of garbage released by crApple. It also kind of reminds me of Firefox and I do not care for Firefox.

It also sucks that Chrome will natively support the Windoze Nag-o-Rama (notifications of any kind really piss me off).

 

I have to say the same as in the comments in one of the links above... it's just a sea of white. Awful. Almost as washed out colors. I like white colors on my keyboard but this is Disgusting!

Edit... “Get used to” I don’t know.

 

Is there more white than the previous version of Chrome? I didn't notice!

 

Unless they removed the ability to change colors you can probably tweak away the white. But, I don't like the look of the rounded edges either. I never liked that about Firefox.

 

I haven’t updated Chrome for a awhile. I enabled Chrome updates in Autoruns and became seasick Maybe a taste of white “washed out color” equal Norwegian winter See... rain and snow.

 

It has become very popular to abuse and overuse white and blue and try to make things resemble the ugly Windoze X UI for some goofy reason. But, it is not popular with me. I like white and blue, and other colors. But, overdo anything and it starts getting ugly and annoying. I also hate the bloated spread-out look that is popular, with everything hogging up extra screen space with ludicrous amount of wasted blank areas instead of condensed. Seems like we now have to scroll through two or three pages of web content to see what used to easily fit on one page. That really sucks, too.

 

I don't use Chrome instead use Firefox.
I saw Mobile like UI for google search on desktop/mobile FF.

 

Then why bother posting?

Anyway, I don't think the new Chrome looks that bad, but it's good to know there's a fallback for those who don't.

 

Why! Because most of them I know use Chrome religiously just to sync bookmarks and other things on their phones(and PC, tablets and what not!) connected to Google accounts. Moreover FF is slowly being Chromified so its better I keep track of these little tweaks to switch to Chrome/Chromium if I don't see any difference between Chrome or Firefox.

 

I like some things about the new look like how the inactive tabs title text is darker so you know what tab your in and how the omnibox is highlighted when chosen.

I do think there is way too much padding and wasted space.

 

An essay / Rant

Have been using Chrome since Win7 days, i.e 2009+ and back in that time this browser used to be very light and fastest. Over the time since IE bombed Firefox and Safari and Chrome came to light add the Mac OS usage as well. Slowly the Chrome became very heavy to the point of RAM eater, and CPU hog. But since the UX was fantastic we were addicted to it, not to forget their sync functionality which was supreme over any browser back in day, later they started to change things up around, particularly after the new Android chief came after Hugo Barra, later Sundar came to light as new chief and CEO later on. Some time later in 2014-15 they up the new tab by adding the links + Google search to it from previous new tab (apps). This is where things started to become bogged down, the same method to fix which brother papusan provided using flags, I used to fix the new tab with that and later sometime in 2016-17 they started to mess with the bookmark manager with adding material design (To have an introduction - this is material design 1, which was based off Android 5.x Lollipop, which had mostly positive reactions since the age of skeuomorphism passed away due to the 3D aspect being still present as layered and having their significant design of the UI elements and swipe was super prominent with 3D elements on top with shadow effect and cool animations, like settings gear in Lollipop), called it mess because this removes the information density. Now let's fast forward to 2018. Try to do that ? Google says Nope.

Another baffling change is the removal of the HTTPS green text from the side of padlock, and now you don't even see secure because they decided to do so. Before this there was another stupid change, removal of Certificate information from the same padlock, to developer option then hit security tab then you can see. Plus they removed the "www." as well sounds trivial ? nope because most of the time you use subdomains not the root domain without www and it's causing issues as well plus it has different DNS records as well but it won't change. Now let's talk about Android P(00p), I don't know how many of you use Stock skinned or Custom ROM Android which was derived from AOSP, you can understand this - Since Lollipop they added toggle widgets and expanded UI for the same, and later in this version it's removed entirely. Instead of typing everything and their direction nowadays, check this -> to see how Google changed a lot over the time. So the flags feature will be dead soon and you must adapt for these ridiculous changes, I didn't even mention how bad this stupid UI looks, rounded trash like in Android P. And they copied the whole Australis UI of FF which was idiotic, the reason people still use ESR Firefox of older FF like Palemoon etc, since User is in control.

So one may ask why changing things around so much and removing useful more informative features or UI/UX. Google's answer is simplicity which is Stupidity IMO, because you are removing options and choice to people and this makes me feel recalling the Apple's BS, they decide what everyone wants and not the other way around, It all falls in place since if you look at Android P and their gesture fail navigation and all white stupid UI and removal of swipe for iOS style tabs at bottom, the damn list is unending... GSF ID BS that they tried to Pull, along with A/B partition mess causing stupid changes to years old best method of partitioning system on Android, causing pain to developers and community...A stupid shame.

A note to custom ROM users if any - recently a developer (Boeffla) retired from the scene, like another famous dev left a few months back - Chainfire (To people who don't know this guy, this guy made Superuser access easy for Android phones in the past, now we have a better option check out - Magisk). On the basis of changes of Google's direction.
See the below quotes if you don't believe me.

From Boeffla

From Chainfire from his G+ post

TL;DR - Flags option will only be temporary until they decided to do so, and the Chrome's RAM+ CPU resource consumption increases over the time, Android Auto uses heavy data analytics caused Toyota to not have it in new 2019 cars and the famous Location data continuous siphon off irrespective of toggle (since we are now in the location access subject, the new Google News redesign application on Android continuously requests for location even loading in RAM like iOS apps even you switch the location data off from app settings-permissions which is BS). Your information is being whored away without your control a really good benefit is Google's transparent nature of the user switches for data collection but ofc you'll lose features like assistant etc. Now even UX is lost in favor for them. So yeah since a decade I was using Chrome and now I just simply can't, Oh I forgot the HW acceleration for Chrome is not that perfect unless you run Win10 (could be wrong).

So now I use Firefox Quantum, I wanted to move when I first saw this news 3 months back, I want to have control over everything. Yes Firefox has it's quirks esp the bookmark manager isn't that level of Chrome but except that one thing (some people may have others) I feel FireFox is much much much better than Chrome especially when starting up and with esp with a ton of tabs and CPU consumption, and even has solid extension/add-ons support as well since most of the developers started using it, PLUS it also doesn't have their stupid Australis BS UI and a native dark mode, (themes aren't perfect/broken I guess since I use AeroGlass the -,x and restore box has a gap) , Chrome Webstore is crap, soon they will start censoring it just like their usual agenda just a matter of time, better to move now before it's too late, and yeah FF also has Sync.

Damn I almost forgot, I guess you should have known, their Dragonfly fiasco, And Project Maven which caused employee backlash new CEO is just after minting money just like other corporates their motto of Don't be evil is dead (not that we should expect something better from these companies but you should observe the change in strategies which effect negatively to you)

So yeah everything is intertwined with their stance and maybe you can observe a pattern like me..It's going bad.

 

Detailed tech details for websites is a must these days and FF delivers it. My bank website has 2 HTTPS based on the device you're using and even payment gateways.
On PC it defaults to 256 bit DH keys with TLS 1.3 and on android phone or mobile payment apps or mobile wallet they use 128bit TLS 1.2. Don't know why it happens and Chrome on Android never say anything about it! So I use FF on android phone too.

 

OK, I had to tweak some settings and this got downloaded on me right away, without a chance to block it. I used this tweak to correct the new UI.

I also disabled this one... (I always hate notifications on computers and smartphones)
New style notification
Enables the experiment style of material-design notification – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS

And, enabled this one... (so I can silence nasty web pages like C|Net with auto-play video crap)
Tab audio muting UI control
When enabled, the audio indicators in the tab strip double as tab audio mute controls. This also adds commands in the tab context menu for quickly muting multiple selected tabs. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS

 

The new look reminds me of the UI updates that G Suite (paid, domain) and Gmail have been rolling out this summer to mailbox users. Same rounded look and wasted white space with default preferences, though it can be changed back to compact UI.

Like @Vasudev I use Firefox instead of Chrome and have for a long time. I find FF and Chrome (or Chromium) to be mostly equivalent to one another and after MSFT's IE6 dark days I'd rather not be locked into a corporate product with my choices limited. Especially not when a Free Software solution works just as well (IMO). *Shrugs*.

Not a fan for change for change sake, which this new UI seems to be.

YMMV.

 

Honestly, just reminds me more of Chrome OS, rounded "friendly" environment. In all honesty, I don't really see the uproar for Chrome itself. It annoys me a little in Gmail, but not much else
Quickie edit: It is annoying however that they decided to spring this on us without our choice

 

Applications get redesigned all the time. At least here you have a method of falling back to the old look. Sure, it's not a matter of checking a box within the UI to do so, but you don't even have the option with most software.

 

It's only a temporary workaround until the flag gets removed. Eventually everyone will be on the new UI whether they like it or not, as has always been the case in the past. Google's "our way or the highway" approach to Chrome has always annoyed me.

 

You know Chrome is based off of an open source project called Chromium, which you can hack on and build yourself if UI changes cause you such grief.

 

New doesn't always look better. At least not for me.
Make Google Chrome Show HTTP and WWW parts of URL
Starting in Chrome 69, the browser features significant changes to the user interface. These include a 'Material Design Refresh' theme with rounded tabs, the removal of the 'Secure' text badge for HTTPS web sites replaced by a Lock icon, and a reworked new tab page. Also, the browser hides the protocol name (HTTP/HTTPS) and the WWW prefix from the URL when the address bar is not focused...

Before:


After:

 

1. chrome://flags
2. UI Layout for the browser's top chrome --> set to 'Normal
3. Profit

 

Redesigning Chrome: An interview with Chrome’s lead designer

https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/redesigning-chrome-interview-chromes-lead-designer/

 

I don't use it often, but I don't mind the refresh. the previous version looked like early 90s internet anyways. This looks more modern.

 

I dig it

 

I appreciate the fixes people have posted in this thread. I am personally really not a fan of the new look and reverted my gmail back to the old style as soon as I found a way and now have gotten Chrome back to how it used to be. Literally came into work and my work browser after noticing it last night on my desktop and I was just thinking to myself how much I was not a fan, and hit new posts on here and this was the first thread that came up.

 

It has also trickled down to their mobile apps. Chrome (and even Google Photos) on Android.
Material design seems to be an inevitability as far as Google's products are concerned.
I'll try applying the fixes here on the mobile google chrome to see if I can restore the old look.

 

Yup, the sucky looking UI update screwed my LG V30 and the tweak doesn't work on the Android version of Chrome. The extra white and rounded edges look like utter feces, but it seems like I am stuck with it. Fortunately, I only use a smartphone for web browsing as an absolute last resort option and I seldom find myself in that sorry predicament.

I really resent it when Nazis have the gall to make decisions for me and then block me from fixing their screw-ups. If I wanted it to look different, I would make it look different. Bastards.

 

I don't see the gall, to be honest. They develop the software, and they have all the right to decide which direction their software should take. Just because it is provided free of charge doesn't mean every decision they take can be equated with the Nazis, and neither do they need to allow you to change it as you see fit.

Don't like it, raise an issue on their developer forum, and see the response... Or better, develop your own competing browser After all, the Chromium code is open source.

 

If it was important enough to burn calories on it, I would. If it gets to the point that I can't stand it then I will probably just stop using, uninstall it and find something else that is less disgusting. I don't have the time or desire to provide feedback or develop anything for something like Android or iOS just because they are not important enough for me to bother with it. I'd be more inclined to do something on the PC version. I'm probably not ever going to care enough to burn any calories on making something better for a smartphone.

The way I generally deal with this sort of nonsense is once I have things the way I want them, I just lock everything down and block updates to keep a static environment. That eliminates most opportunities for annoyance or inconvenience.

I don't know how to do that on my smartphone, and haven't taken time to figure it out. And, I probably never will due to it being really low on my list of priorities.

 

I went with Firefox.
Feedback does pose too little value and by the time they look at the feedback I'll be done with product anyway!
My general rule is allow fallback to older UI or something officially very easy to achieve using UI rather than going to advanced mode. Keep it simple for everybody. Those who like new UI let 'em use it and those who aren't should be allowed to keep old UI.

 

I had used Mozilla and Firefox for years, but since switching to Chrome some 5 or 6 years ago, I am unable to tolerate it. I have tried to go back to Firefox many times and I just find it way too annoying, unattractive and cumbersome compared to Chrome.

Google is like NVIDIA to me... hate lots of things about both of them, but everything else sucks a lot worse so I choose the least disgusting and most tolerable option.

One thing I have learned over the years is that being the best at something is not evidence of greatness. It is often only proof that you are lucky enough to be the least crappy player in a game where literally everyone sucks.

 

Firefox is really good. I don't give much preference to UI rather I give importance to How it performs in real world and now its more chrome like. You can install chrome extensions but its little buggy. Except for Download managers, FF is really good.
I don't like Chrome at all but I am willing to use Chromium or Opera.
At least on phone I use same addons that I use on PC on a damn old Samsung android Nougat with 1GB RAM with 5-6 tabs and anything more it crashes. FF consumes just 200-260Megs even with 8-10 addons on Phone. The same thing on PC consumes around 1.5GB with 10-15Tabs open.

 

I do not care for it. I like Chrome UI better and better synchronized across all of my devices. Bookmarks, passwords, history, places, everything is always at my fingertips on eveey device i am logged into and Firefox does not handle that as well for me. And, exporting between them is not graceful.

 

Hmm well, FF lacks that feature of syncing using google account.
I like FF for the fact that FF profiles can be switched from one in windows to Linux or other way around w/o much difficulty. I'm lazy to setup everything new. I don't do syncing about keep local profile backup which keeps all privacy tweaks intact.
The UI is kinda similar but how productive it is depends on your preference which will not be same as mine.
I totally get your point. You want Handoff/Continuum feature on all apps you use so that they're synced and keeps a tab on activities where you left it off some time ago and allows you to continue where you left it.

 

I love and use Firefox for most of my web-browsing, but also have to use Chrome for one of my jobs. See no evil in the rounded look, I even kinda like it . Syncing tabs beetween multiple devices, either in Firefox or in Chrome, would be a dire nightmare for use case - I often run hundreds of tabs on each device, and only 5-6 of them overlap. \=

 

Not only pushed out ugly New rounded look...
View attachment 164090
Chrome 69 Adds Forced Login, Threatens Privacy: How to Fix it
Techpowerup.com | Yesterday, 19:05
There was a time when Chrome users could be safe and think that what they did in Google Services (Gmail, YouTube, Maps, etc) was separated from their actions in the browser. One thing wasn't necessarily tied to the other, but now things have changed - and without any public disclosure from Google.

Starting with the recently published Chrome 69, if you use this version of Chrome and log into any Google service or site, you will be automatically and magically logged into Chrome with that user account. A systems architect called Bálint disclosed a problem that changes Chrome behavior in a way that could potentially harm user's privacy.

Fortunately, users can disable this forced login policy. To do so, you must use Google Chrome flags and change one of the parameters to avoid problems.

The steps are the following:

1. Go to "chrome://flags/#account-consistency"
2. That will show the flag 'Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar' select "Disabled" from the drop-down menu
3. Click on "Relaunch now"

After that, you will be able to keep the old Chrome behavior, and logging into Google services and sites won't log you into Chrome.

 

Google backtracks—a bit—on controversial Chrome sign-in feature

"Chrome 70, due in mid-October, will retain the unified signing in by default, but it will allow those who want to opt out to do so. "

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...-bit-on-controversial-chrome-sign-in-feature/

 

Google Chrome's New UI Is Ugly, and People Are Very Angry hardocp.com | Dec, 29, 2018

Not everyone was a fan of Chrome’s Material Design refresh when it debuted in September with the release of version 69, but there was some good news, in that users could revert to the old theme by visiting the chrome://flags page and modifying a setting. Unfortunately, Google has incited the wrath of those who hate mobile-first, eye-searing UIs by removing that option this month to force its adoption abortion. The company’s engineers are advising complainants to switch to another browser, as those who downgrade to an older version to get the old UI back are opening themselves up to security risks.



For the past two to three weeks, social media sites like Reddit and Twitter have been flooded with complaints about Chrome's new UI and users wailing about not being able to switch back to the old style. Most of the complaints that Chrome users are bringing forward are legitimate. It is incredibly harder to find a desired tab on the tab bar with the new UI, compared to the old one. Furthermore, Chrome's new UI also broke users' ability to mute tabs, which is an inconvenience of its own.

----------------------------------

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chromes-new-ui-is-ugly-and-people-are-very-angry/

The new Chrome UI is not that bad, but tweaks to its tab bar are definitely needed. Just like Microsoft and Mozilla, Google is not going to bring the old UI back, but if they know what's good for them, they won't ignore this vocal feedback from its userbase, otherwise, they might see Firefox-like consequences.

 

I am still using it because the alternative browsers suck worse, but I truly loathe the aesthetics of the new Chrome UI. It's butt-ugly. The mobile-first baloney needs to die and the people that push the nonsense need to be beaten to a bloody pulp for their abject stupidity. It really sucks that tech giants like Google and Micro$lop adhere to an "agenda first, customers last" business model. This would be utterly condemned and rejected in other areas of business, and it should be here as well.

 

The UI did feel like it was optimised for iPads or chromebooks. It will get better in coming days.

 

The greater problem is that the extra icky things are not limited to Chrome. The first priority for the whole industry should be to get rid of all the white. Not only is it disgusting to look at, it really irks me when it is nearly impossible to identify all of the fields where text should be typed in because the data entry field is exactly the same color and blends into the background. I don't know how often, but probably more than half of the time, filling in a web-based form, you think you are done only to hit submit and get an error because a required field you never even noticed was left blank. And, then some of the info you entered has to be re-entered a second time because the web page did not save it because it was "sensitive" data.

The Windows 10 look and feel is really screwing things up in terms of web design. I really do not understand how anyone could ever find it aesthetically pleasing. It also sucks having everything so spread out on a web page. Having everything condensed looks better and it is more efficient with less scrolling. The pop-out side menus is also grossly inferior to legacy top menu navigation. All just so we can have a sucky smartphone experience on PC. The people responsible for this deserve a lobotomy with dirty gardening tools.

 

Why not use Themes which darkens the UI a bit.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/material-incognito-dark-t/ahifcnpnjgbadkjdhagpfjfkmlapfoel
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/morpheon-dark/mafbdhjdkjnoafhfelkjpchpaepjknad
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/black-carbon-+-silver-met/lodhggoaglindpoejnjldimdlikkphph
Maybe you'll find something in about:flags of chrome.

 

I will check in flags again, but I did not find anything the last time I looked. The only issue with themes is they do not apply universally to all content on every web page. The Chrome home page looks fine with my theme. Go to any other web page and the ugliness returns because ugly is how the content creators designed their web pages. Sadly, fixing "modern" atrocities with the Chrome UI won't fix the ugly web design that is so popular.

At least YouTube has a dark theme. Not perfect, but definitely an improvement. Everyone else should follow suit.

It doesn't have to be a dark theme to look nice. All it takes is a little contrast, lighten up on the absurd abuse of white on everything and get rid of the bloated look and feel.

 

BTW, which theme did you apply?

 

First kill the old nice GUI with the change to stupid new rounded look, then Kill Ad Blockers.
People Are Mad That Google Chrome May Kill Ad Blockers Anandtech.com | January 24, 2019

Google has proposed changes to Chromium, the open source engine used in its Chrome browser, that could effectively kill ad blockers as we know them today. That isn't the stated reason for the changes, of course. Google says it wants to make Chrome extensions more secure, better defend user privacy and ensure page load times aren't increased by unruly extensions. But some are arguing the move could be more detrimental than that.

Here's what the Ghostery ad blocking company said in a statement, as per Gizmodo this week:

“This would basically mean that Google is destroying ad blocking and privacy protection as we know it. They pretend to do this for the sake of privacy and browser performance; however, in reality, users would be left with only very limited ways to prevent third parties from intercepting their surfing behavior or to get rid of unwanted content.”​

On January 22, developer Raymond Hill made a similar point in a discussion about the change.

"This essentially means that two content blockers I have maintained for years, uBlock Origin ('uBO') and uMatrix, can no longer exist," he said.

To say uBlock Origin would be missed if it disappeared is an understatement; it's been installed more than 10 million times from the Chrome Web Store alone.

What next?

You can probably see where this is going.

Google might not move forward with the proposed change to Chromium. But even considering this shift demonstrates the potential risks of giving one company so much influence over the web.

 

In doing so, I can safely say a large sum of people is going to change browsers.. adblockers are an integral part of one's web surfing experience.

I sure as hell won't want to look at ads if I can choose not to.

 

80% of the users don't even know how to use extensions or addons on Chrome or Firefox. They use stock browser.

 

I'm afraid you are right.