Following the introduction of the Material 3 Expressive earlier this year, we’ve seen several Google apps picking up elements from the new design language. While Google has completed the M3 Expressive rollout for apps like Messages, there are still a few holdouts, such as the Chrome browser for Android.
Thankfully, that’s changing now with Google rolling out an update over the weekend. According to 9to5Google, the updated design is rolling out to Chrome 141 for Android in the form of a server-side update. It appears to be rolling out widely at the moment, with the design revamp also going live on my Pixel device running the same Chrome release.
The three-dot overflow menu now features circular containers for actions like Forward, Bookmark, Download, Site info, and Reload/Refresh. If you’re on a page that’s bookmarked, you will see the Bookmark button adopt a rounded square (squircle) shape, thereby making it easier to distinguish from the rest of the circular buttons.
The tabs view also gets a refresh
Following these changes to the three-dot menu, Chrome is also revamping the open tabs view, with the New tab button (denoted by a +) also becoming a squircle bearing M3 Expressive elements. Moving on, the buttons for the tab switcher, incognito tabs, and tab groups also morph into a squircle when they’re selected.
Meanwhile, tab groups are easier to identify among a sea of open tabs, with each group adopting the theme color you choose while creating it. If no name is given to the tab group, users will see the number of tabs open in the group.
Credit:Â 9to5Google
Lastly, Chrome is also testing a split page load/progress indicator for the omnibar, leveraging rounded corners, as you can see above. However, this isn’t rolling out widely at the moment, and I’m not seeing it on the Chrome 141 release just yet.
It’s hard to know the changes are live unless you look closely enough. As 9to5 points out, this is largely because Chrome hasn’t increased the button sizes following the design refresh, unlike other M3 Expressive redesigns we’ve seen in the past.
This refresh comes on the heels of M3 Expressive rolling out to some of Google’s key apps, including Gmail, Calendar, Phone by Google, Contacts, and Google Home more recently, along with several others.
