Chrome Canary V85 Hides Full Addresses In URL Bar, Will Likely Roll out to Stable Soon

Annoyed by how Chrome hides the https, www portion of a URL, you will HATE this new so-called feature.

Google has tried on and off for years to hide full URLs in Chrome’s address bar, despite the public backlash that came after every previous attempt, Google is pressing on with new plans to hide all parts of web addresses except the domain name.

A few new feature flags have appeared in Chrome’s Dev and Canary channels (V85), which modify the appearance and behavior of web addresses in the address bar. The main flag is called “Omnibox UI Hide Steady-State URL Path, Query, and Ref” which hides everything in the current web address except the domain name. For example, “https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/lenovo-ideapad-flex-5-chromebook-review/” is simply displayed as “androidpolice.com.”

There are two additional flags that modify this behavior. One reveals the full address once you hover over the address bar (instead of having to click it), while the other only hides the address bar once you interact with the page.

There is a good chance this will roll out to the stable build of chrome soon now that it’s in the canary build.