Maybe this time we are really with the address bar at the bottom for Google Chrome on mobile – at least on iPhone: the news has been noticed by some users on the latest Beta version for iOS, distributed through TestFlight, although not everyone who joins the program has already received it. According to the reports, you can move the bar simply by pressing it long and dragging it down, or by turning to the browser settings.
Moving the address bar down is a stylistic choice that makes more and more sense as the smartphone market evolves. It’s no secret that most users want bigger and bigger displays, and that once they reach a certain limit in width, manufacturers have nothing left to do but develop in height. On larger devices, a certain level of dexterity is now needed to reach the upper side, especially in the case of one-handed use.
Apple has made the navigation bar at the bottom the new default of its Safari for iPhone for a couple of years now, but paradoxically between the two it was Google to experiment first with this idea: reports and tests date back even on the various Canary and Chrome Beta even in 2017, but for some reason the company has never completed (meaning: distributed on the stable version) the work. And going even further back, it is necessary to observe that it was one of the peculiar features of the Windows Phone browser first (Internet Explorer) and Windows 10 Mobile then (Edge).
For now, Google has not commented on it, neither on the expected timing of release nor on the possible arrival on Android. In fact, it is worth mentioning that Chrome on iOS is profoundly different from other platforms – in fact the engine is mandatory Apple’s WebKit, the only one allowed on the App Store and the same on which Safari is based. Google only puts its “skin” and its superficial features that we are all used to (especially the synchronization of passwords and other browsing data).