Chrome Canary is testing a search box at the top of the three-dot menu. A Chromium change merged on November 4 adds a new entry on the chrome://flags page called ChroMenu Search (#chro-menu-search). When it works, the box at the top of the menu reads “Search menu, or type an action,” so you can type what you want instead of hunting through submenus.
The search box only works together with a second flag, #app-menu-glow-up, which turns on Chrome’s redesigned menu. Both flags are off by default, and neither feature has been released.
More flags to watch in Chrome Canary
Canary also picked up flags for an experimental page called Context Hub (chrome://context-hub). A Chromium change added on November 4 brings three flags: #context-hub, #context-hub-topics and #sync-journey. The page includes LaunchPad, which builds to-do lists from your browsing history, inactive tabs, and Gmail, along with Memory banks, Memory Bank Chat, Topics, JumpStart, and Record and Replay. This is very early internal work. Most views were empty when I tested it. Also note that this Topics view has nothing to do with the Privacy Sandbox Topics API that Chrome uses for ads.
A third flag, Bookmark bar area keyboard navigation (#bookmark-bar-area-keyboard-navigation), splits the bookmarks bar into three keyboard areas: apps and managed bookmarks, saved tab groups, and your bookmarks. The Tab key stops once in each area, and the Left and Right arrow keys move between buttons. The Chromium change keeps it off by default for accessibility testing, on Windows, Linux and ChromeOS only.
As with any flag spotted in Chromium’s source code, these are early, experimental signals rather than confirmed features. Google often tests changes this way and later ships them, changes them a lot, or drops them before they reach a stable Chrome release.
What else happened in Chrome this week
- Chrome 157 reached Stable on November 3 as version 157.0.8103.38/.39, with 213 security fixes. Seven are rated Critical. Google’s post does not say any of them are being exploited.
- Chrome 158 started an early Stable rollout on November 4 as 158.0.8127.18/.19, going to a small percentage of Windows users first, with Mac to follow.
- Beta and Dev moved up. Beta is now 158.0.8127.18, and Dev moved to 159.0.8144.0.
- ChromeOS 156 got a Stable update on November 6, version 16836.32.0, with 10 browser security fixes.
- The Googlebook November update is rolling out. Google’s post on the Googlebook Help Community lists better browser memory stability with lots of tabs open, Bluetooth LE mice that reconnect after a restart, and a fix for a black video screen on external monitors on some models.
What this means for you
The useful step this week is a simple one: restart Chrome so the Chrome 157 security fixes take effect. Open the three-dot menu, go to Help > About Google Chrome, and click Relaunch if an update is waiting. The menu search box is worth watching, but for now it is a Canary experiment you can only try with two flags turned on.
All of this week’s stories are covered in the Chrome Story weekly news video above. Chrome Story is independent and not affiliated with Google.
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