Google Chrome is bringing a new user interface for its ‘tab page’ which will have query tiles.
Chrome has been working on bringing new designs to its tab page for a while now, and back in 2019, they brought a new user interface for the Chrome tab page which had tab organizational theme. All the UI elements were moved closer to the top of the display and ‘recommended articles’ was replaced with the tab features.
This design has still not reached the stable channel, but Google has started testing on a more advanced design theme that adds ‘Query tiles’ on the tab page for quick search.
Android Police has reported that these query tiles are predefined search shortcuts with photographs. This is the correct way to explain them. All the most searched topics are arranged in a tab organizational theme with tiles that have images of those categories.
For example, if there is a tile named ‘CoronaVirus,’ the image would be of the Covid-19. Likewise, another tile named ‘Investment’ may have some money-related picture as its thumbnail image. When a tile is tapped, it will produce few sub-categories underneath it, like COVID-19 related news, videos, or games under the category of Electronics.
So, this will make the search super quick and efficient. If a user needs the recipe of something, all they would need to do is to click on the tile which is named ‘Recipes,’ and when the sub-categories will be shown, the user can write the name of the dish that they want to look up for.
So far, Google is offering thirteen first-level tile categories in the US. These categories are News, Recipes, Fashion, Health, Films, Music, Electronics, TV Shows, Astrology, Sports, Education, Automobiles, and Investment.
As mentioned above, a list of sub-categories will be presented once a tile is tapped. Users will also have an option to edit the keywords in their search before submitting it. This way they can customize their search and make it more efficient and narrowed down.
This feature of editing the search keywords can be enabled or disabled as per the user’s wish from chrome://flags through the #query-tiles-enable-query-editing option.
This tiles feature is currently in the Chrome Dev and Canary versions. It is not known exactly when it will reach the beta testing phase and then to the stable channel. But if anyone wants to try this new feature on their device, they will have to go to Google Chrome flag page and then search for ‘query tiles’. From there, this #query-tiles flag can be enabled.
There are a total of six different flags for this ‘tiles’ feature that can customize the features as per the user’s desire and the workability of the device. Apart from the two flags mentioned above,
The other flags are as follows:
#query-tiles-omnibox which enables query tiles to show up below the Omnibox, both on the new tab page and anytime you click on the Omnibox in a tab.
#query-tiles-country-code which personalizes the tile content based on the user’s location. So far, India, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, and the US are available in this category.
#query-tiles-single-tier is used for limiting queries to a single level no sub-category.
#query-tiles-instant-fetch for no user-facing changes.
All these flags are experimental, and it is not known if they will be available in the Chrome stable version or not.
Read next: Good news for all Chrome users as Google is testing a chip-based permission feature to reduce the impact of annoying notifications and prompts
Chrome has been working on bringing new designs to its tab page for a while now, and back in 2019, they brought a new user interface for the Chrome tab page which had tab organizational theme. All the UI elements were moved closer to the top of the display and ‘recommended articles’ was replaced with the tab features.
This design has still not reached the stable channel, but Google has started testing on a more advanced design theme that adds ‘Query tiles’ on the tab page for quick search.
Android Police has reported that these query tiles are predefined search shortcuts with photographs. This is the correct way to explain them. All the most searched topics are arranged in a tab organizational theme with tiles that have images of those categories.
For example, if there is a tile named ‘CoronaVirus,’ the image would be of the Covid-19. Likewise, another tile named ‘Investment’ may have some money-related picture as its thumbnail image. When a tile is tapped, it will produce few sub-categories underneath it, like COVID-19 related news, videos, or games under the category of Electronics.
So, this will make the search super quick and efficient. If a user needs the recipe of something, all they would need to do is to click on the tile which is named ‘Recipes,’ and when the sub-categories will be shown, the user can write the name of the dish that they want to look up for.
So far, Google is offering thirteen first-level tile categories in the US. These categories are News, Recipes, Fashion, Health, Films, Music, Electronics, TV Shows, Astrology, Sports, Education, Automobiles, and Investment.
As mentioned above, a list of sub-categories will be presented once a tile is tapped. Users will also have an option to edit the keywords in their search before submitting it. This way they can customize their search and make it more efficient and narrowed down.
This feature of editing the search keywords can be enabled or disabled as per the user’s wish from chrome://flags through the #query-tiles-enable-query-editing option.
This tiles feature is currently in the Chrome Dev and Canary versions. It is not known exactly when it will reach the beta testing phase and then to the stable channel. But if anyone wants to try this new feature on their device, they will have to go to Google Chrome flag page and then search for ‘query tiles’. From there, this #query-tiles flag can be enabled.
There are a total of six different flags for this ‘tiles’ feature that can customize the features as per the user’s desire and the workability of the device. Apart from the two flags mentioned above,
The other flags are as follows:
#query-tiles-omnibox which enables query tiles to show up below the Omnibox, both on the new tab page and anytime you click on the Omnibox in a tab.
#query-tiles-country-code which personalizes the tile content based on the user’s location. So far, India, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, and the US are available in this category.
#query-tiles-single-tier is used for limiting queries to a single level no sub-category.
#query-tiles-instant-fetch for no user-facing changes.
All these flags are experimental, and it is not known if they will be available in the Chrome stable version or not.
Read next: Good news for all Chrome users as Google is testing a chip-based permission feature to reduce the impact of annoying notifications and prompts
