Google is repeatedly A/B testing a plethora of modifications in its products, and the company’s Chrome browser is one of its biggest testing grounds. We’ve only recently compiled a list of experimental features tucked away behind flags or simply hidden from users. Reportedly, another might get joined into this club since it has just been discovered that Google’s Android version of the browser has a long-press menu for the tab switcher in the works. It lets users easily close the current tab or open another one without entering Chrome’s multitasking view.
XDA Developers managed to get the flag to show up through a few tweaks, even though it’s not accessible by users yet. Once it’s live, users can activate the menu by heading to chrome://flags and finding “tab switcher long-press menu.” The feature itself is pretty self-explanatory: Users will be able to perform actions such as opening a new (incognito) tab or closing the existing tab without entering the tab switcher itself, which could save them some precious time.
Just a right-click on a tab in the Chrome browser shows a variety of options that are mostly tab-related. The menu lists options for creating a new tab, pin a tab, close a tab, bookmark all tabs, or to undo the last closed tab among other things.
Additionally, few of these options may no longer be available in the context menu. A right-click on a tab in Chrome Canary shows the following options only: Reload, Duplicate, Pin, Mute site, Close, Close tabs to the right. The options for creating a new tab, duplicate, closing other tabs, reopening a closed tab, and adding bookmarks to all tabs have been removed from the menu. Google shifted a few of these to the context menu of the tab bar instead. When a user right-clicks on the tab bar, he will see three of the missing options — new tab, reopen a closed tab, bookmark all tabs — there.
The modifications to Chrome’s tab context menu are not a fixed deal yet and Google might restore some options to the context menu before the changes land in Stable. Still, it is another modification that will affect the experience of Chrome users.
