I pulled down Chrome's address bar and there's no going back. So you can do it too

I always wanted to have the address bar at the top, but when Chrome Canary reverted to the Chrome flag for enable bottom barI decided to try it. Now I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Google doesn't change its mind and remove it again.

I became barradereccionesabajero and I don't regret it. On mobile for years now It's a trend to move the buttons down and it makes perfect sense that the address bar moves as well. It's not a panacea, but I'll also tell you how to activate it.

The bottom bar requires less work, but…

Google Chrome on my PC has the address bar at the top, so it makes sense that this would be the case on mobile as well. Or not? The truth is that for years a gap has been growing between those who maintain this classic style and those who choose to put the address bar at the bottom. Maybe something less intuitivebut not necessarily less practical.

But I wasn't very convinced. I decided to try it Well, it's true that using the cell phone with one hand involves some digital acrobatics (hand digits). On my phone I can't even use one-handed mode because it's exclusive to gesture control and I stick to the navigation bar.

Moving the address bar down is still an experience, but is now available in stable Chromeso you no longer even need to use the Canary or Beta version of the browser. By changing the Chrome flag as needed, the browser gives you the option to choose where you want to place the address bar.

It's been like this for a while and I have to admit it at first it seemed very strange to mealthough little by little I got used to it. As I mentioned before, it doesn't seem as intuitive to me as the top bar and it has slightly strange behaviors.

For example, the context menu is a bit special with the bottom alignment, especially since it is so long. If the benefit of lowering the bar is being able to access the buttons more easily, it doesn't make much sense for said menu to frequently reach the top edge of the screen.

It also doesn't seem to me that it makes much sense that the bar be at the bottom while you navigate but at the top when you edit itcreating a not too homogeneous experience. It seems to me that it would be better to opt for a lower button panel and keep a simplified version of the address bar on top, automatically hidden, like Samsung Internet does.

But we have to be content with what Chrome offers us, and there is no doubt that Bottom bar makes one-handed operation easy. It's easier to edit the current website, start a new tab, or switch to another open tab. When entering an address, even if the address bar itself goes up, the keyboard remains at the bottom, within easy reach.

Now this is still a test and it is clear that still needs to be debugged the final result. This is evident when the bottom bar covers the buttons of Chrome itself (such as the Reboot when changing a Chrome flag).

The system also it gets crazy if you have groups of tabssince the address bar occupies the same space as the buttons of these tabs. I've also noticed that the system regularly works with websites that include ads aligned to the bottom, usually stationary portion. The thing is that with the self-hiding bottom bar, that bottom part changes size and makes the advert seem to not appear and disappear, which is somewhat annoying.

So you can put the address bar below

The previous problems are only the price of progress and it is predictable that little by little Chrome will improve the implementation. If you too you want to go to the bottom address baryou just need to follow a few simple steps.

• In the Chrome address bar on mobile, type chrome://flagswithout the comma.
• In the search engine Chrome Flags, type “#android-bottom-toolbar”, without the quotes.
• Press Default and change it to Enabled.
• Credit Rebootbelow.

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As I mentioned before, keep in mind that sometimes you will find that this bottom bar covers parts of the interface, so my recommendation is that you get used to move the bar up temporarily (by pressing and holding it) in case you notice that you are missing something.

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