Chrome Story

You Can No Longer Disable “Pull to Refresh” on Chrome for Android

Google Chrome for Android no longer has an option to disable “Pull to Refresh”. For people who don’t really like using this feature, this is pretty annoying. There was a way to disable this using a flag, but version 75 removed this flag too.

Disable Pull to Refresh Flag

Chrome for Android, until version 75 had a flag that we could use to disable the pull to refresh effect. The flag was named “Disable pull to refresh” and was available at:

chrome://flags/#disable-pull-to-refresh-effect

That removed the only way that we had to disable this feature. When I saw a very long Google discussion thread where dozens of users were complaining that the flag is no longer available, I spent a few minutes trying to find a possible workaround. However, it looks like there is no way to disable this at the moment.

A Possible Workaround

There is a new workaround, now that the old workaround is gone. At least a handful of users have reported that this works. It did not work for me though.

Set chrome://flags/#overscroll-history-navigation to disabled and restart Chrome.

The only thing that you can do at the moment is to send feedback to Google using Chrome’s built-in tool. To do this, click Menu (three dots) > Help > Report an Issue.

I will definitely update this article as soon as a method or a workaround is available to disable pull to refresh.

Why Disable? Isn’t that a Feature?

Many of you might be wondering why anyone would want to disable something that was introduced as a feature. Pull to refresh for sure makes browsing easy, in most cases. After reading through many user reports and discussion threads, these are the most popular reasons that I found users mention while trying to disable it.

  • You might accidentally refresh a web form before completing it.
  • Many users complain that they don’t understand when a refresh is triggered.
  • There are at least a handful of users who mentioned that the refresh happens when they scroll up. I did not quite understand why this happens. But yes, this happens too.

Are you looking for a way to disable this feature too? Drop-in a comment and say hi.

In

9 responses to “You Can No Longer Disable “Pull to Refresh” on Chrome for Android”

  1. AS

    I’m working on freeCodeCamp eventually and that feature is really annoying. It still can’t be disabled?

    Reply
  2. testing2
    S

    Opera supposedly still has this flag to let you disable the refresh…

    Reply
  3. Dovi

    Hi,
    Any update? How to disable refreshing by pull page?

    Reply
  4. jose

    I hate the pull to refresh feature

    Reply
  5. yuo

    I hate the pull to refresh feature too

    Reply
  6. Steven

    I work in sales, and use my phone for work. This feature just cost me a commission. I am very upset right now.

    Reply
  7. Barkuti

    Very piss poor decision enforcing this, as with anything enforced, and namely when it is a piece of shite.
    I switched from Chrome to Opera a few years ago. Opera is doing great overall, with two or three caveats. You can disable the pull to refresh effect in it, as S said above.
    I haven’t come back to Chrome, though. But I am now trying Kiwi browser, which is largely based on Chrome, and it inherits the fucking pull to refresh effect aswell.
    The nice point of Kiwi is that it supports Chrome extensions, this is why I am trying it. Browser extensions are something which I believe should be rather more widespread in Android by now.

    Reply
  8. Steven

    I stoped using chrome android for purchases, due to the refresh occuring while scrolling up. Poor design choice

    Reply
  9. Astrocosmo
    cosmo

    I was filling and completing a report on a website, uploaded an attachment just wanted to fill up some remaining inputs on final step, while scrolling down the whole page refreshed!.. hours of work and composition was gone instantly, extremely frustrating! 😤..

    Reply

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