This new Google Chrome upgrade had me saying “wow” out loud, and it’s a game changer

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I don’t know about you, but I think I should spend at least 10 hours a day staring at the internet browser.

Most often it is Google Chrome. I already use this tool for work, having started using it long before I joined my team at Tom’s Guide.

I know Chrome isn’t everyone’s choice, but I’ve always loved how easy it is to use with my existing Google accounts. The fact that I can now use it for work as well makes it all nice and simple.

But recently a new Chrome feature started rolling out to Google Workspace users that made me take my hands off the keyboard and let out a Keanu-like “whoa” out loud. It’s an upgrade to the New Tab I call upon on a regular basis, and it’s made my workday easier in such an intuitive way that I’m surprised it’s taken this long to roll out and hope it comes to all browsers soon.

New Tab City

Here’s what happened: I was working on my work and needed to add some data to a shared Google Sheet before a meeting that I knew was coming today but couldn’t remember when.

Naturally, I pressed Ctrl + T to open a new tab in Chrome, so I could move my mouse to the bookmarks bar, click on my bookmark for the spreadsheet, and navigate to the page I needed.

Suddenly, a helpful widget appeared right under my mouse pointer, showing the last six files I had open in Google Drive and details about who updated them last. Is this the spreadsheet I’m looking for? Right at the top.

Even better, there’s a similar Google Calendar widget right next to it that tells me my next meeting will be right after lunch; It lets me know I have plenty of time to get my work done.

Maybe it seems silly to gush about browser widgets like Chrome Cards, but these little upgrades to Chrome have really made my daily work life easier. They make me wonder how I ever worked without them for so long, and with productivity-focused features like these, that must be my dream goal.

While researching these new Chrome Cards, I was reacquainted with Chrome’s customization features; these features now include the option to show or hide them per card. Presumably this indicates we’ll be seeing more Chrome Cards in the future, but Google hasn’t made any promises on this (to my knowledge).

These New Tab upgrades begin rolling out in late September 2024, the company says. blog postand will be available to all managed users of Google Workspace later this year.

Appearance

I want Google to roll out these business-focused improvements to everyone who uses Google Chrome because it’s so helpful to have my Google Calendar and Drive open and waiting for me every time I open a new tab.

Of course, I know it’s already as easy as opening a new tab, hovering the mouse over the little grid icon in the top right corner, and using that to open the quick menu of Google apps, but life’s too short to triple-click my mouse once it’ll do the trick.

Moreover, I hope every browser creator steals this feature (if they haven’t already) and extends it. It’s nice enough to be able to open a new tab in Edge, for example, and see specific shortcuts to the website you want, but the browser would be much more useful with similar widgets that put your most-used files at your fingertips.

But it feels like a pipe dream to believe that companies like Apple, Google or Microsoft could work together to make such useful browser features interoperable and widely available. The best I can hope for is that these New Tab features roll out to more Chrome users soon; so you can see why I’m so excited to get back to work.

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