In the interim, I'm hoping Google will take the time to collect feedback from users. The flag doesn't expire until Chrome 100, which gives us plenty of time to keep it disabled. Unless you get into a habit of clearing your tabs, this will quickly devolve into a junkyard of old tabs.įor those like myself who hate Start Surface, the good news is that it's rolling out to a very limited number of people right now. Worse still, navigating to a site from Chrome's Home button launches a new tab. Since opening a new tab removes everything but the URL bar, I can't quickly jump to my most visited websites. With Start Surface, I'm unable to do any of these things. I can also launch the site in a tab group, in an Incognito tab, or even remove it from the new tab page. With the old design, I'm able to see all my Most visited websites at once without needing to scroll. Start Surface also makes the new tab page a lot less enjoyable to use. However, this change shows that Google is trying to push users to use Discover more than ever, which is just not on in its current state as a source of mainly clickbait and poorly curated news. Sure, some of my distaste for Discover has to do with it always suggesting low quality sites to me, and yes, I can always turn it off. Start Surface seems to be a blatant attempt by Google to get more of its Discover content in front of our eyes - and I'm really not a fan. The new tab page can't seem to catch a break with Google testing multiple versions - it's hard to keep track. However, it's getting increasingly clear that Discover is the focal point of Chrome's redesign - here's hoping Google reconsiders.

It's still early days, though, with Chrome 92 not showing any sites in the homepage's Omnibox. If you're visiting a webpage, only the top two visited sites will show up. Your most-visited sites will find a new home in Chrome's Omnibox - similar to the other Start Surface experiments, they're limited to a scrollable single row of ten icons. Google's Discover feed will conveniently occupy that space instead, filling up nearly the entire homepage with articles you (probably) won't care about. When you tap on the home icon, you'll notice that all of your most-visited websites have vanished. Chrome homepage ( left) Chrome homepage's Omnibox ( middle) Omnibox when visiting a website ( right).

Hide most visited in new tab page