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‘Pull to refresh’ gesture can now be enabled on Chrome for Windows 2-in-1’s and Chromebooks

Sometimes it’s the little things that polish off an experience. For me, one of the best parts of Chrome on mobile devices is the ability to simply swipe from the top of the page to refresh it. Now, after being revealed last year, Google is making that same option available on laptops.

If you recall, last year it was discovered that Google was going to bring this gesture to touchscreen laptops. That’s now a reality, as spotted by a Reddit user (via XDA-Developers).

This functionality is live right now in the developer channel of Chrome OS, as well as Chrome for Windows machines. Once you’re on that version, simply enabling the related flag below and rebooting enables the gesture.

chrome://flags/#pull-to-refresh

From there, the functionality is as simple as on smartphones. When at the top of a page, simply pull down from the top and an indicator will come down and refresh the page when you let go. Obviously, this may not come in handy much when using your laptop as an actual laptop, but when in tablet mode, it’ll be useful no doubt.

If you’re not on the developer channel yet, you might still want to give this a shot. There are reports on Reddit of this functionality working on the current stable version of Chrome OS, but they’re pretty hit or miss. It works for some, but not others. You can check out the functionality in action in a video on the Reddit post.


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