Google is looking to introduce a new feed ablation feature to the Chrome browser for smartphones, allowing users to keep the interface from cluttering up.
Most individuals who use Google Chrome for mobile, which should be over seventy percent of the entire market, are probably rather familiar with how the interface looks: specifically, the New Tab page. It’s got all your most visited and/or bookmarked websites neatly laid out in circular icons. On top of those icons is the search bar to look up anything as conveniently as possible. Finally, scrolling down will reveal two different sorts of feeds: the first is the Discovery feed, which features stories that have gained considerable attention and traction both locally and internationally; the second is the Following feed, which recommends articles from websites that a user frequents or follows. While these can be rather helpful to keep around, and I’m sure most people use these feeds as a way of staying connected with and up to date on current events and whatnot. However, I’m sure other people would also like to be able to either turn their brain off temporarily, since they receive their updates via a constant barrage of social media input, or maybe they’d just like a cleaner interface to run through.
Chrome for desktops, for example, is a much neater browser despite having so much extra space that could be utilized, and I personally think that this works towards the benefit of the browser. I personally never liked the Discovery feed on Chrome for mobile, since it never recommended stories of interest or even threw me stories from outlets that I actually like and follow. There’s only so many times I’m going to click on a story and either hide it or claim it to be irrelevant before I realize that all Google’s looking for is pushing forward content that’s gaining public interest, regardless of whether or not that recognition is for the right reasons. However, it seems that Google is interested in providing another solution for such cases in the form of the new feed ablation settings.
Feed ablation is an unnecessarily fancy way of saying that Google will remove all feeds from the Chrome browser for mobile, because, currently users can turn of their feed right from the new tab page but tapping the setting gear and opting for 'Turn off' option, or may be Google has some other plans for the new Feed Ablation feature. Anyway, the feature can currently be encountered as a flag on the Chrome Canary browser on this page chrome://flags/#feed-ablation. While the flag is currently only catering to Android versions of the browser, an iOS version is highly speculated to arrive soon enough.
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Most individuals who use Google Chrome for mobile, which should be over seventy percent of the entire market, are probably rather familiar with how the interface looks: specifically, the New Tab page. It’s got all your most visited and/or bookmarked websites neatly laid out in circular icons. On top of those icons is the search bar to look up anything as conveniently as possible. Finally, scrolling down will reveal two different sorts of feeds: the first is the Discovery feed, which features stories that have gained considerable attention and traction both locally and internationally; the second is the Following feed, which recommends articles from websites that a user frequents or follows. While these can be rather helpful to keep around, and I’m sure most people use these feeds as a way of staying connected with and up to date on current events and whatnot. However, I’m sure other people would also like to be able to either turn their brain off temporarily, since they receive their updates via a constant barrage of social media input, or maybe they’d just like a cleaner interface to run through.
Chrome for desktops, for example, is a much neater browser despite having so much extra space that could be utilized, and I personally think that this works towards the benefit of the browser. I personally never liked the Discovery feed on Chrome for mobile, since it never recommended stories of interest or even threw me stories from outlets that I actually like and follow. There’s only so many times I’m going to click on a story and either hide it or claim it to be irrelevant before I realize that all Google’s looking for is pushing forward content that’s gaining public interest, regardless of whether or not that recognition is for the right reasons. However, it seems that Google is interested in providing another solution for such cases in the form of the new feed ablation settings.
Feed ablation is an unnecessarily fancy way of saying that Google will remove all feeds from the Chrome browser for mobile, because, currently users can turn of their feed right from the new tab page but tapping the setting gear and opting for 'Turn off' option, or may be Google has some other plans for the new Feed Ablation feature. Anyway, the feature can currently be encountered as a flag on the Chrome Canary browser on this page chrome://flags/#feed-ablation. While the flag is currently only catering to Android versions of the browser, an iOS version is highly speculated to arrive soon enough.
Read next: Google Adds Price Filters to its Popular Products Carousel
