Trying Out Material Design in Google Chrome

Google’s Illustration of Material Design

Do you speak Indonesian? Read the translated article here.

If you’re an Android enthusiast like myself, I’m pretty certain that you, at least, have heard of the term “Material Design”. Yes, it’s the design guideline recommended by Google to streamline the interface of Android OS and apps. If I remember correctly, the design was introduced in version 5 (Lollipop) and it’s getting better with 6 (Marshmallow) and the upcoming 7 (Nougat). Let’s just pray that our phones will get it :p. Anyway, the design is also starting to get popular among app developers, even major ones.

And, if you like Material Design, I have a good news for you who use Google Chrome as your daily web surfing companion: Material Design is actually present in Google Chrome, though it’s hidden. You just need to find the settings and enable them. Where are the settings? As usual, it’s past the break. Don’t worry, it’s going to be short and easy :p

Accessing chrome://flags

chrome://flags Page

Do you know that Google Chrome has a set of “experimental” features? I call them “experimental” because they’re still in beta, and may compromise not only your browsing experience but possibly your browser. You can enable these features in the chrome://flags page. You just need to type that address in your address bar. Normally, you don’t need to enable these features. Heck, you normally don’t even need to access this page. For this guide’s sake, however, you need to change the values in two fields:

1. Material design in browser’s top chrome. Change the value in the dropdown box to “Material”.
2. Material design in the rest of the browser’s native UI. Click the “Enable” button.

Once you’re done, click the “Relaunch Now” button to restart Google Chrome. Once it’s back open, you should notice a few changes in appearance. Have a look at a couple of screenshots below:

Google Chrome: Normal

Google Chrome: Material

Should you want to get back to the default appearance, you just need to return the first field to “Default” and click the “Disable” button on the second field, then click “Relaunch Now”. What if you don’t have both those fields? Well, I think you should update your browser. See if that helps.

Anyway, I personally think that the changes should be strictly cosmetic. To be honest, I prefer the new material look. Sure, everything looks smaller but I think it looks cleaner and well, more pleasing to the eye. What about you?

Well, I guess that’s all for now, Folks. I hope you’ll find this guide useful. As usual, if you have any question, just leave a comment below. I’ll do my best to reply as best as I can. Finally, thanks for reading and I’m looking forward to your next visit! 😀