Chrome Home bottom bar redesign possibly canceled in favor of ‘Chrome Duplex’

Abner Li | Feb 6 2018 - 3:13 pm PT

Chrome for Android’s bottom bar redesign has been in development for well over a year, with the interface undergoing several revisions. However, it appears that Chrome Home is now being “ended,” while a new “Chrome Duplex” design has emerged.

Android Police this morning reported on the possibility of the bottom bar design being scrapped. Several reports in the browser’s bug tracker related to Chrome Home were closed in recent days, with Chromium developers only noting that:

We are ending the current Chrome Home experiment and closing the corresponding Chrome Home bugs. Thanks for the feedback and support!

Interpretable in several ways, a Chromium commit found by XDA- Developers now suggest Chrome Home is being replaced, instead of nearing a possible rollout.

Its replacement is called “Chrome Duplex” and would be a “split toolbar” version of Chrome Home. Going off that description alone, the new interface might feature both a top and bottom bar. Such a look would be a middle ground to the current Chrome Home interface that is essentially finalized and can be manually activated via flag.

Placing interface elements, like the address bar and tab switcher, near the bottom is undoubtedly better for larger phones where it’s hard to reach the traditionally placed URL bar.

However, in using Chrome Home, there was always some confusion given how that address bar and bottom bar for Home, Downloads, Bookmarks, and History occupied the same area. Hopefully, whatever new design the Chrome team pursues maintains the similarity of a top located address bar, while achieving convenience.