With a recent update, Google implemented the new Material You design in the Chrome browser. The new design is much more clean and user-friendly. While the redesign is good, if you miss the old design, you can restore it quite easily. In this tutorial, we’ll show you a simple way to restore the classic Chrome UI. Let’s get started.
Steps to Restore Old Design in Chrome
To restore the old Chrome design, you must disable a flag. Here’s how to do it:
First, launch the Chrome browser if it is not already open.
Paste chrome://flags/#chrome-refresh-2023 in the address bar and press Enter. This takes you to the Chrome flag we need.
Find the Chrome Refresh 2023 option and select Disabled from the dropdown next to it.
Select Disabled from Chrome WebUI Refresh 2023 dropdown.
Next, find the Customize Chrome Side Panel option and select Disabled from the dropdown next to it.
Finally, click the Relaunch button at the bottom to apply changes.
Once the browser is restarted, the Google Chrome interface will revert to its old design. The beauty of this method is that you can restore the design by simply enabling the above-mentioned flags.
Keep in mind that with time, Google will make the new design the default and may remove the flags. In that case, you are out of luck and cannot enable the old design. You are stuck with the new UI.
And there you have it. It’s that simple to restore Chrome’s old UI design.