Google's Chrome web browser is not really a browser known for its customization options when it comes to the browser's user interface; that might change soon, however, as Google engineers began to work on a number of customization features some time ago.

Work on the new customization options began in mid 2018 but first options did not become available until May 2019 when Google enabled first options in Google Chrome Canary.

Google Chrome Canary is the cutting edge version of the Chrome web browser. It is a development version that is not suitable for production environments because of that.

Chrome users could set different New Tab Page backgrounds back then but many of the other options were not available at the time.

The release of Google Chrome 77.0.3828.0 changes that. The new version unlocks the interface color customization menu and additional New Tab Page customization options.

It is necessary to enable two experimental flags in Chrome Canary to unlock the new options. Here is how that is done:

Load chrome://flags/#chrome-colors and set the flag to Enabled. Load chrome://flags/#ntp-customization-menu-v2 and set the flag to Enabled. Restart Google Chrome.

Open a New Tab Page after the restart and activate the customize option on the page (the edit icon in the lower right corner of the page).

Chrome opens the customize page with the three options Background, Shortcuts, and Color and theme.

Background gives you options to pick a custom background image for the New Tab Page or, and that is a new option in Chrome 77, a solid color. Solid colors are limited to the colors that Chrome displays when the option is selected; there is no option to pick a color using a color wheel or by entering color codes like Vivaldi Technology does in its browser.

The color and theme menu is active in the new version of Chrome. You may use it to set different interface color schemes in the Chrome web browser.

Only four color schemes are available at the time of writing. Just select one of the available options, e.g. pretty or bluish, to set a different interface color scheme.

The changes take effect immediately; you can click through all the available color schemes to select the one that you like the most.

Closing Words

The only option that Chrome users had up until now was to install one of the available themes for the web browser. The new options that Google plans to integrate in the browser are still experimental in nature; it is possible, albeit unlikely, that these will get pulled and never make it into the release version of the browser.

Google has yet to reveal when the changes will make it in a stable version of the web browser.

Now You: Which customization options do you like in browsers? (via Deskmodder, Techdows)

Summary Article Name Prepare for a Google Chrome Color Explosion (New Tab Page) Description Work on customization options in Google Chrome continues; Chrome 77 features new options to change the color scheme of the browser. Author Martin Brinkmann Publisher Ghacks Technology News Logo

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