Chrome's address bar now sits at bottom of display by default on Android

After appearing in the development release of Chrome for Android way back in June this year, the UI change that brings the address bar at the bottom of the display has finally started making its way to the stable version. I am a regular Chrome user on my Android phone (Nexus 5), and can confirm that the change appeared for me today.

So with the change (which is part of what Google calls Chrome Home), single-hand usage of the Chrome Web browser on a big screen smartphone has become comparatively easy. And if that wasn’t enough, swiping up the address bar gives you quick access to frequently visited websites, as well other handy stuff, including downloads, bookmarks, and browsing history.

It’s worth mentioning that it was already possible to manually bring the address bar to the bottom in Chrome stable channel, but not everyone knew about that (especially end users), so the feature’s penetration was low. Making the change default means now it’s accessible to all Chrome users on Android.

For the record, I am running Chrome version 62.0.3202.73 (stable), which was officially released just a few days back, and reached my phone the same day (Chrome’s Google Play listing on my phone confirms that).

Why this version-related information is important because recent reports suggested that Chrome 62 has the new Chrome Home UI, but it’s not enabled by default. Chrome 63 was expected to make this new UI default, but from what I am seeing, the change has come in early.

As I said in the beginning, the change appeared for me only today, meaning it could very well be a server-side switch. And it seems to be Android specific at the moment, as I checked out Chrome for iOS on an iPhone 6s Plus running iOS 11, and it still had its address bar at the top.

So that’s all about it. Are you also witnessing the change in your Chrome web browser? Let us know in comments.