Google Chrome is the most popular and widely used web browser in the world. It is the default web browser for Android, and this makes it the most used browser on mobile phones as well. Google routinely adds new features to the Chrome browser for Android and the most recent and prominent addition was a grid view for tabs. The company launched Chrome 89 for Android earlier this week and features the ability to view links from a page instead of opening them in a new tab.
After upgrading to the latest version of Google Chrome on Android, you will be able to see the “View” option in the menu that appears when you press and hold a hyperlink. As seen by 9to5Google, the page unfolds like a sheet when you tap Preview. This sheet occupies almost the entire area visible on the original web page, which becomes the background.
At the top of this preview window in Google Chrome, you will see a bar with the title of the page, the name of the site and the favicon of the site. On the right, there are buttons to start viewing in a complete tab or to close it.
In addition, there is a solid pull button at the top of the bar to close the View. Although you can also drag the button to partially minimize the preview – to read something on the background page, you cannot resize the preview page. Dragging the bar upward expands the view to its original view while dragging it down closes the view.
Notably, although the feature is now starting to be implemented for most users, Google has been testing it since 2018. Previously, it was called a “sneak peek” and could be activated using a feature flag in Chrome Dev or Chrome Canary.