Google has listened to user feedback on Chrome’s Tab Hover Card Images and reinstated the associative flag back again in Chrome 114 to disable them. Google is still working on providing a setting for the same, as of now it is not available.
Long Story short, Chrome introduced Tab Previews with version 79, which some users not liked. Those utilized the Respective flag to turn off the page thumbnails. Users concerned about privacy found them intrusive and distracting.
Users have been asking Google to provide an option or setting that control Tab hover card previews appearance in Chrome for a long, but Google has not provided it so far (Edge does).
But, they also removed the respective flag in Chrome 113. After multiple requests and reports, Google has agreed to temporarily restore the flag, the change is live in Dev, Canary, and Chrome 114 beta.
Google has confirmed the change will get into version 114 stable. Early Stable released on May 24 may already have it.
“[M114] Adding flags for hover card image previews
This CL merges commit id f1bb82ced6f551984ca7a44bf6f31884261aaace from main to M114 release branch. Note, while the original commit re-adds the flag, M114 code still had the flag code so it updates the expiry date and updates the flags to match what is shown in M115.”
This may make users happy, but providing a permanent setting to manage tab hover cards appearance is a good thing, this has been requested, and Google is working on it, there is no ETA when the setting will appear, we’ll let you know when that happens.
How to disable Tab Hover Card Images in Chrome 114 Stable
- Launch Chrome
- visit chrome://flags
- Search for” Hover”, For the Tab Hover Card Images flag, select “Enabled”
- Restart the browser.
Tab Hover Cards are gone. The change will persist even when you update Chrome next.
Chrome will continue to show the tab title and website name when you hover over a tab. These are called Tab Hover cards.
What’s your take on this? Have you found Tab Previews annoying? Let us know in the comments below.
Final words: Chrome 114 stable arriving on May 30, 2023, to include a flag to turn off Tab Hover Cards in Chrome. The Setting to control the same is still not available.
