On June 3, Chromium engineers merged a change that adds a dedicated entry to chrome://flags for “omnibox-loom,” the internal name for the floating AI search interface that has been showing up in recent Chrome Canary builds. The change itself, tracked as Gerrit change 7872045, doesn’t add new functionality, it simply makes the existing experimental flag visible and toggleable from Chrome’s flags page instead of requiring a hidden command-line switch.
According to the change’s own description, the entry exists “to allow users and developers to easily enable or disable the feature flag for testing.” Its author also flagged that this is an early prototype with no near-term launch plans.
Omnibox-loom is the engineering codename for what outside testers have started calling the “Everywhere Omnibox,” a floating search box that detaches completely from the browser window and opens centered on the screen, closer to macOS Spotlight than Chrome’s usual address bar. Testers who’ve already tried it in Canary describe it opening with Ctrl+Shift+Space on Windows and Linux, or Cmd+Shift+Space on Mac. Instead of the familiar “Search Google or type a URL” placeholder, it greets you with an Ask anything prompt tied to Google’s AI Mode and Gemini, plus a + menu for uploading images or files and generating new ones on the spot.
For now, this particular change only affects how the flag is exposed, not what the feature does. Once it reaches your build, Chrome Canary users will be able to search chrome://flags for “omnibox-loom” to turn it on or off, rather than needing a special launch switch. It remains unavailable on Chrome Beta or Stable, and Google hasn’t shared any timeline for a wider release.
As with any flag spotted in Chromium’s source code, this is an early, experimental signal rather than a confirmed feature. Google frequently tests changes this way and ships them later, modifies them substantially, or abandons them entirely before they ever reach a stable Chrome release.
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