How to turn off new grid tab layout for Chrome on Android?

Posted on May 11, 2021

Google first announced that it will have been adding grid layouts and tab grouping in Chrome on Android until September 2019. Since then, the company has introduced this new interface for many Chrome users. However, until this year, the interface was still not available to a large portion of Chrome users on Android. Google finally rolled out the tab grid layout to a large number of Android users in January this year.

While it isn’t as simple as just going into the settings for Chrome and turning it off and Google has been breaking the fix with some of its updates, we’ve got the most up-to-date instructions on how to bring back your old card-based tab management. The new grid layout and tab grouping could be a powerful tool, after years with the previous tab management system, this kind of change can leave you feeling completely lost.

Steps you need to take to disable the new Android tabs feature

How to disable the tab grid layout in Android

Type “chrome://flags/#enable-tab-grid-layout” into the address bar
Tap on the drop-down menu in the Tab Grid Layout entry
Select “Disabled“
Tap the Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen

Google broke this workaround with a subsequent update to Chrome for Android so there’s one extra set of steps to follow now.

Type “chrome://flags/#temporary-unexpire-flags-m88” into the address bar
Tap on the drop-down menu in the Tab Grid Layout entry
Select “Enabled”
Type “chrome://flags/#temporary-unexpire-flags-m89” into the address bar
Tap on the drop-down menu in the Tab Grid Layout entry
Select “Enabled”
Tap the Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen

If you are specifically put off by the new bottom tab bar that was introduced with this update but would like to keep the grid layout, that can be done, but only by sacrificing Tab Groups as well.