Google Chrome is constantly changing, and recently, we’ve seen Google update a few long-standing features in the browser. The downloads bar was just replaced with a new toolbar button and menu, and now Google is experimenting with another core browser function: bookmarking a page.
When you bookmark a page in Google Chrome, either by clicking the toolbar icon or by using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+D on Windows/Linux or Command+D on Mac), a popup appears at the top of the window. It confirms the bookmark has been added, with a text field for editing the bookmark name and a dropdown menu for selecting the folder. If you’re not logged into a Google account and synchronizing your data, you’ll also see a message about that below the bookmark confirmation.
Google is now testing a change to the bookmark dialog. A new feature flag has been added, called “Simplified Bookmark Save Flow,” which is already available for testing in Chrome Canary. It changes the dialog to hide the text field and dropdown menu — instead, there’s just a message that the bookmark has been saved. You can click the new “Edit” button to reveal the missing text field and dropdown menu, or click “More” to open a larger popup with a tree view for your bookmarks folders.
If the change rolls out to all Chrome installations, editing a bookmark after saving it will require an extra click, which is a bit annoying. However, it’s not hard to see why Google is experimenting with a simpler dialog. When you save a bookmark, the text field and dropdown menu can make it seem like the browser is waiting on you to do something else. A simple confirmation message with a button to edit the bookmark is also how bookmarking works on most mobile browsers.
There’s no official timeline for when the change might roll out more widely, and there’s also the chance that this is just an experiment that will be quietly removed at some point. You can try it out now by installing Chrome Canary, navigating to chrome://flags, and searching for “Simplified Bookmark Save Flow” in the search bar.
Source: Chromium
