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One would expect Google Chrome, the most widely used mobile web browser, to be the pinnacle of mobile web browsing. However, as it turns out, it is popular for the same reason Internet Explorer was popular back in the 1990s and 2000s: it is pre-installed.
Given that the competition has a much smaller market share, Google is under no pressure to provide a good web browsing experience.
This is a collection of what is wrong with the mobile version of Google Chrome. These are features or options Google could have easily implemented long ago, but either neglected or, for some reason, chose not to.
The term "Chrome" refers to the mobile edition for the rest of this page, unless stated otherwise. Anyone feel free to contribute.
Mandatory pull-to-refresh
Let's get the "elephant in the room" out of the way first. The constant threat of accidentally refreshing a page has turned browsing with Chrome into a headache since 2019.
In spite of the abnormally high number of complaints by users suffering from accidental refreshes, Google has refused to reinstate the option to turn off this anti-feature. It seems to be part of Google's brand identity.[1][2][3][4] Websites look wildly different from each other. Some websites are designed in a way where it isn't clearly visible where the top of the page is. On those sites, pull-to-refresh makes web browsing a walk on eggshells.
Pull-to-refresh, to some extent, makes sense on a notification feed where new items come from above, but it does not make sense on the vast majority of web sites, especially rarely updated static pages, and it is redundant to the refresh button in the quick menu that can be accessed even without scrolling to the top first, so there is simply no need for it.
Accidental refreshes waste time, battery charge, and quota from mobile data plans.
But Google thought that something that makes sense in the notification feed of Twitter (I refuse to call it "X") or Instagram automatically makes sense in a web browser. Nope.
See also Google Chrome § Mandatory pull-to-refresh.
In comparison, both Firefox mobile and Samsung Internet let the user turn this anti-feature off.
Data lock-in
Chrome provides no option to export web browsing data to a file, making it impossible to back up certain user data without root access, namely the session (list of opened tabs) and browsing history.
Exporting the browsing session to a text file would be useful to prevent so-called "tab hoarding", where the number of open tabs keeps increasing, without having to lose the existing browsing session.
Both the desktop and mobile editions of Chrome have a hard three-month limit for retaining browsing history. Without the ability to export the browsing history, it becomes difficult to find pages after a long time.
In comparison, Samsung Internet allows copying a list of open tabs to the clipboard by checking the "select all" box, pressing "share", and then choosing "copy to clipboard". Samsung Internet also allows copying multiple URLs from the history at once to clipboard, but with no time stamp, and there is a size limit that limits the number of selectable pages to something between 120 and 150 pages, depending on the lengths of the URL, title, or both.
This is still far from ideal, where the entire history and session could be dumped into a file with a single tap.
On desktop web browsers, extensions are able to provide such functionality, but of course, Chrome on mobile does not support extensions.
Tab viewer has no list view mode
The tab viewer only features a grid view which has two-columns in vertical orientation and usually four columns in horizontal orientation.
There used to be a list view mode which would preview a longer part of the page title, as well as part of the URL. It could be turned on through a flag in chrome://flags, named , but it was taken away in 2019 with with the goal to "reduce chrome://flags size", which defeats the whole point of chrome://flags, which is to provide a dumping ground for options that fit nowhere else on the user interface. It is similar to about:config on Firefox.
Chrome (Chromium) developer David Trainor stated:
Leaving the swich in place as it is highly used as a command line value, but removing it to trim down chrome://flags size.
It is unclear how this benefits the end user.
On Android, users without root access can not launch Chrome with custom command lines, at least not without using ADB, which requires an external computer, making it impractical on the go.
Samsung Internet's tab viewer does feature a list view option.
No draggable scroll bar
Seriously, Google? Desktop web browsers had this since the 1990s, and some mobile web browsers like Samsung Internet and Opera also had this for some time.
In addition, Samsung Internet features options to show shortcuts to jump to the top or the bottom of the page.
Slowly scrolling to text search results
When searching text on the page, Chrome does not immediately jump to the result, but scrolls to that result, which can take several seconds on a long page. And when you are looking through many results, these seconds add up.
Additionally, this scrolling animation needlessly wastes battery power.
Of course, as one would expect from Google, there is no option to change this behaviour.
Unable to play media from multiple tabs at once
Yet another thing desktop web browsers have been able to do since the 2000s, yet the "pinnacle of mobile web browsing" can't do so as of 2026.
With the processing power smartphones have nowadays, this should easily be doable.
Even if it increases power consumption, the user should be given the choice.
Unable to open a new tab after the current tab
New tabs are opened at the end of the tab list. With many tabs open, this adds the inconvenience of the new tab being far away from the current tab.
The user might want to look something up that is related to the currently viewed page. The inability to open a new tab after the current tab adds the inconvenience of having to find the current tab in the long tab list again, rather than swiping to switch to the last tab.
The only workaround is to open a link on the current page in a new tab by holding it down and choosing "open in new tab". However, this relies on a hyperlink existing on the current page, which might not always be the case.
Firefox on desktop has the browser.tabs.insertAfterCurrent property in about:config for this purpose. If this preference was put in a more visible spot (namely about:preferences), more people would undoubtedly use it.
Slow menu animation
The "fancy" menu animation each time you open the quick menu, with the cascading menu items, might look nice, but it wastes a second every single time you want to use something in that menu, and this adds up.
Of course, no option to disable this exists inside the app, but thankfully, the Android developer tools provide an option to disable transition animations system-wide.
First row of quick menu not at bottom if URL bar is at bottom
The first row of the quick menu contains the icons for "go forward", "information", "save page", "bookmark", and "refresh".
However, it is still at the top of the quick menu even if the URL bar (or "omnibar") is at the bottom.
To Google's credit, they at least added the option to align the URL bar to the bottom. Firefox, Samsung Internet, and the Chromium derivative Kiwi Browser all had this by 2020.
Unable to keep URL bar on screen
On mobile web browsers, when scrolling down, the URL bar automatically hides. When scrolling back up, the URL bar is revealed again.
This is an ancient relic from a time when entry-level smartphones had 4:3 screens (such as the Galaxy Fit S5670). Now that smartphone screens have very tall aspect ratios such as 18:9, there is simply no need to hide the URL bar in vertical orientation anymore.
I would rather have 5% less screen space for the web content than having to pull down every single time to reveal the URL bar.
In addition, pulling down in Chrome sometimes activates the universally hated pull-to-refresh gesture (see first point) instead of revealing the URL bar.
No developer tools or page inspector
Granted, no other mobile web browser seems to have this, but wouldn't now be a time for mobile web browsers to get a basic page inspector at least?
Smartphones have so much processing power nowadays, yet mobile apps lack basic features software on desktop computers had for decades. This is disappointing to see.
Smartphones have large screens nowadays. It certainly would be possible.
Download list
The list of downloaded files offers no way to get the full source URL of a downloaded file. Only the domain is visible.
There is also no way to remove items from the download history without deleting the corresponding file in the download folder.
Annoying download confirmation in incognito mode
In 2023, Google added an annoying prompt in incognito mode that reads "Download file? Anyone using this device can see downloaded files.", which, of course, can not be turned off.[6]
Given that most smartphones are only used by one person most of the time, this message is pointless.
Built-in media player lacks basic options
The built-in media player has no built-in options to loop a media file, to open a media file in a new tab, or to copy the link to a media file into the clipboard.
The desktop edition of Firefox has all of these features.
Of course, the media player in a web browser is no replacement for an actual media player application like "mpv-android", but having these basic options built right into the web browser media player would add convenience.
Large images not downscaled to screen size
If a picture has a resolution of at least several megapixels, Chrome fails to downscale it enough that the entire image fits on screen.
So Chrome even struggles with something as simple as image viewing. How embarrassing.
No option to load pages without images
Images are much larger in size than text, but sometimes, text is enough and would speed up loading, especially in remote areas where only 2G connectivity is available.
Unfortunately, Chrome lacks the simple option to only load text, without images.
Unable to see which page redirected me to the current page
While Firefox stores all redirects in the browsing history, Chrome makes it impossible to know which intermittent pages redirected me to the current page.
Unable to block redirects and self-refreshes
Some web pages misuse self-refreshing redirects, making it hard to go back to the last page.
Firefox on desktop offers the accessibility.blockautorefresh property in about:config for this purpose.
Giving credit where credit is due
At least, Chrome has no fixed tab limit. Samsung Internet has a tab limit of 99, which was raised from 50 at some point. On the other hand, Samsung Internet's tab limit prevents tab hoarding. But I still prefer not having a tab limit.
In addition, Chrome lets the user save web pages in the MHTML format in the download folder, while Firefox mobile has no such option and Samsung Internet stores pages with data lock-in.
In recent years (as of 2026), Google enabled saving pages in Incognito mode, realizing there was no reason for it to be disabled, given that downloads are outside the scope of incognito mode.
The quick menu has icons. From what I remember, they were added in 2020 or 2021. This is something Firefox on desktop once had, but it was removed because Mozilla's developers decided it was "clutter", even though it helps finding an option faster.
References
- ↑ Please bring back ability to disable Android pull-down-to-refresh. I lost my work because the feature. [41471115 - Chromium]
- ↑ No way to disable pull-to-refresh [391378124 - Chromium]
- ↑ Wanting to know how to disable pull to refresh as it's no longer showing up in flags - Google Chrome Community
- ↑ Missing Android Chrome 75 flags disable-pull-to-refresh-effect How to disable it now? - Google Chrome Community
- ↑ 8cf3626120e3949f9718b626217bf93b8b6d2545 - chromium/src - Git at Google
- ↑ How to disable incognito mode, "Download file? Anyone using this device can see downloaded files." - Google Chrome Community
External links
- Chrome is turning into the new Internet Explorer 6 | The Verge
- Video: Google Chrome Must Be Stopped - Jody Bruchon