CHROME
Disable the new ‘toast’ notifications
Aside from killing off the popular content blocker uBlock Origin (see our news story in Issue 696, page 7), Google has made some odd decisions with Chrome this year. It removed the side-panel button just as most users had grown accustomed to the feature; relocated the ‘Search tabs’ button to the less convenient top-left corner; and – as we reported in Issue 696 (page 42) – replaced its ‘Search image with Google’ option with Google Lens.
Google’s latest wheeze is to show pop-up messages, known as ‘toast notifications’, when you perform certain actions in Chrome. Introduced in version 130 (released in October), they currently appear when you copy a link or image to your clipboard, and add a tab to your reading list ( 1 in our screenshot below), with more coming soon.
Although you may find these confirmation messages helpful, their intrusive size, solid blue colour and the fact they linger for several seconds can also make them distracting. Thankfully, it’s possible to disable the new toast pop-ups if you don’t like them.
Type chrome://flags in the browser’s address bar and press Enter to load the Experiments page. Find the entry Top Chrome Toasts 2 , click its dropdown menu and select Disabled 3 .
Click ‘Relaunch’ to restart Chrome without the notifications. You can re-enable them later if you fancy some toast after all.