Chrome is testing a bookmarks bar feature nobody asked for

Aug 14, 2026 — 12:09 PM ET

• Google is testing a new Chrome feature.
• The feature allows the browser to auto-hide your bookmarks bar if it detects that you haven’t used it recently.
• When it happens, the browser will notify you and give you an opportunity to undo the action.

Google is working on a Chrome feature that could auto-fix your bad passwords. It appears that’s not the only automatic tool the Chrome team is working on. For those who use the bookmarks bar infrequently but still keep it visible, Chrome could soon decide to hide it for you.

Spotted by Windows Report, Google is testing a new feature for the Chrome browser. The Chromium commit describes the feature as a tool that can automatically hide the bookmarks bar. In practice, the browser will automatically hide the bookmarks bar if it detects that you haven’t used it recently.

If the browser decides to hide your bookmarks bar, you’ll see a notification, like the one in the image above. That notification will explain why your bookmarks bar was hidden. It will also give you the opportunity to undo the action and make the bar visible again.

This change also affects the Bookmarks bar option in Chrome’s settings. Currently, the option exists as a toggle, letting you turn the bar on or off. Meanwhile, this feature would turn the toggle into a list of three options: Always show, Only show on New Tab page, and Always hide. It appears that “Only show on New Tab page” would be the default option.

The Only show on New Tab page option is fairly self-explanatory. You’ll only see the bookmarks bar when you open a New Tab page. So the bar will disappear once you visit a website.

This feature is not enabled by default on the stable version of Chrome. You’ll have to activate it by enabling a flag if you want to try it out. To do so, you’ll need to go to chrome://flags and find the NTP Simplification Bookmark Bar flag.