Turn off Google Chromes “Switch To Tab” Feature

When I’m browsing, I tend to use tabs a lot. I clean up my tabs when I’m done with them, and I open new ones when I want new ones.

Recently, Google Chrome, introduced a feature which attempts to fix issues of tab proliferation by offering a “Switch to Tab” feature. This feature shows up in the Omnibar when you start typing something in the Omnibar that is similar to a tab you already have open.

It’s an interesting idea, but not useful to me. I find that it negatively impacts my experience using Chrome. Things that use to work (example, right arrow copies selected tab url into current url bar) don’t work with Google Chrome’s new “Switch to Tab Feature”.

I like to think I’m knowledgeable and responsible enough to switch tabs when I want to switch tabs, and open new tabs when I want to open new tabs. That said, I’ll be disabling the “Switch To Tab” feature.

To disable the “Switch to Tab” feature in Google Chrome first find the omnibox-tab-switch-suggestions flag in the Chrome flags menu. (Psst: it’s here: chrome://flags/#omnibox-tab-switch-suggestions). Then… select “Disabled” from the dropdown options.

Restart Google Chrome and you should be free of that annoying “Switch to Tab” feature ??

Disabling the Avatar Menu in Google Chrome

I’ve recently noticed a tiny little button show up in the top right hand corner of Chrome next to the “Close”, “Maximize” and “Minimize” buttons. This button is for Google Chromes newish “Avatar Menu”.

It looks like this:
Google Chrome Avatar Menu

Since I don’t typically like new things.. I immediately went looking for a way to make it go away.

That said, you can use Chrome flags to turn off the avatar menu in Google Chrome.

  1. Open the Chrome flags by typing “chrome://flags/” into your Omnibar.
  2. Search through the flags for “Enable the new avatar menu
  3. Select the “Disabled” option and save.
  4. Relaunch the browser.

Kaboosh. The new Avatar menu is gone (for now).