Google Chrome 59 Brings Material Design to Settings

The stable version of Google Chrome 59 for Windows and Mac arrives this week, bringing with it a new Material Design look and feel to Settings.

Google Chrome 59 also brings “a number of fixes and improvements,” as you might expect. But the marquee feature this time around is of course that nice redesign of the Settings interface.

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If you’re a Chrome user—and according to the most reliable stats, most of you are—you’re probably familiar with the old Settings interface, which hadn’t changed much at all over the years. It’s grown so unwieldy that I’ve taken to just using Settings search to find the options I need.

Out with the old

But with Chrome 59, Settings offers a much more attractive design. Better still, it’s nicely laid out, and structured logically with different sections.

From the menu on the left, you can now jump directly to those sections, or access an Advanced menu with even more options.

 

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Conversation 13 comments

  • StephenCWLL

    06 June, 2017 - 10:59 am

    <p>Yup, seen it in the dev channel builds. It's a pain if you ask me, but hopefully it'll grow on me.</p>

    • pachi

      07 June, 2017 - 10:12 am

      <blockquote><a href="#123023"><em>In reply to StephenCWLL:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><em>It's horrific. Yes, more attractive in screenshots. Absolutely awful in terms of usage. What are these companies thinking lately in terms of UI…. </em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • Waethorn

    06 June, 2017 - 11:00 am

    <p>I'm hoping to see this propagate to Chrome OS as well.</p><p><br></p><p>At least Google can get a unified theme across multiple properties – lots of stuff on Google Admin is the same, which makes it dead simple to control G Suite accounts. Why can't Microsoft do this? Windows Server is a mess of UI's. Azure is too.</p>

  • Pbike908

    06 June, 2017 - 11:01 am

    <p>Pretty sweet! Just updated. </p><p>If Google ever perfects running Android apps on Chromebooks, look out…</p>

    • Waethorn

      06 June, 2017 - 11:43 am

      <blockquote><a href="#123026"><em>In reply to Pbike908:</em></a></blockquote><p>It's a stop-gap option. They'd like to be able to control the development cycle of their OS more aggressively, which is why they're looking at alternative options like Andromeda and Fuchsia afforded them. Part of is has to do with their existing dependencies on legacy Linux versions, as well as Java, which they'd like to be rid of. Fuchsia has a new kernel – Magenta – and developer model: Flutter. Andromeda was mostly just a rehash of the Android-on-ChromeOS model, so it didn't alleviate most of the issues that Google has. </p><p><br></p><p>I'd expect more news late in the year because it's just going through the gestation phases right now. Maybe a developer preview for I/O next year. It'll be a slow transition, but a big one too. I think the hardest thing will be to get Android developers moved over, but they may just migrate their existing Android container system that they use for Chrome OS over to Fuchsia. I just hope they don't get into another whole app store for Flutter apps. It was smart of them to just call it "Google Play Store" for that reason. Chrome OS and G Suite users will have no real problems with the new system, since Chrome is just a cloud platform for web apps, so that won't really change much.</p>

  • siko

    06 June, 2017 - 11:25 am

    <p>Still rethinking…. while in that process, super happy with Edge.</p>

  • Waethorn

    06 June, 2017 - 11:48 am

    <p>Not sure if you covered this already, but there is a Bookmark Manager extension by Google that provides thumbnails:</p><p><br></p><p>https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bookmark-manager/gmlllbghnfkpflemihljekbapjopfjik</p&gt;

  • Oasis

    Premium Member
    06 June, 2017 - 12:00 pm

    <p> Saw this when I updated it this morning and before I came on Thurrott.com. I like it.</p>

  • dnation70

    Premium Member
    06 June, 2017 - 2:47 pm

    <p>u also have to change flashplayer settings also to get it to work</p>

  • Igor Engelen

    06 June, 2017 - 2:49 pm

    <p>For quite some time already I've been setting every available material flag in Chrome so I kinda lost track of what's set by default. </p><p><br></p><p>If you surf to chrome://flags and then via ctrl-f open the search box and look for 'material' you can enable like about 10 material related settings.</p>

  • John Scott

    06 June, 2017 - 3:50 pm

    <p>I tend to agree, I think it looks better. First noticed the change with Chrome OS updates on some Chromebooks I was working with. I thought then, this was a much better look and menu function. I use Chrome browser most of the time, and their is still something kind of faded about its UI vs say a Firefox or Edge. Guess I would rather have more bolder outlines and stuff and not so washed out. </p>

  • Tom Wilson

    07 June, 2017 - 5:32 pm

    <p>Might just be an odd coincidence, but since I installed 59, ads are getting through ublock origin. I uninstalled that, installed adblock, and ads still come through.</p><p>As an example, all the ads on drudge come through. </p><p>They don't come through with edge &amp; adblock however.</p><p>I ran a scan with malwarebytes, negative, and same behavior.</p><p>Haven't spent a lot of time trying to track down the problem, so it might be something I missed in settings or what not.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

  • skane2600

    08 June, 2017 - 5:11 pm

    <p>It looks like it's more straightforward to navigate with a more comprehensive menu, but it's not as if it needed material design to make the change (unless material design just means "UI's that don't suck").</p>

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