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Chrome Beta for Android has full screen browsing very well hidden

Saturday, 2 March 2013


Does the image above look a little weird? That is right, it is Chrome running full screen on an Android device. A curious Nexus 7 user (Smackel from Reddit) accidentally found out we can turn this hidden feature on by pulling some strings and making a few tricks.

 It ressembles the way Mac computers can turn apps full screen, getting rid of all the icons, bars and extra bells & whistles. Similarly, this full screen mode makes the browser take over the notification bar, giving the user a few more millimeters of navigating power.

 It is interesting to think that just a few milimiters of screen real estate can make such a huge difference. Browsing suddenly feels much cleaner and more pleasing to the eye. But let’s cut through the chase – how exactly do we do this?


First, you need to have an Android 4.0+ device and download Chrome Beta (not Chrome for Android). If you fit the lonely requirement, you can go full speed ahead! Simply follow the next steps:

 Type “chrome://flags/” in the address bar
Enable WebGL
Go to the Boids and Buildings Chrome Experiment page
Click on the “Launch Experiment” button
Click on “Run”
You are now on full-screen and can close this page
Keep in mind this is not an official feature just yet, so it’s not perfect. Full screen mode will go away after you close Chome Beta, but you pretty much have to kill it. It continues to work if you leave the app running in the background. If Chrome Beta gets closed, though, you have to follow the last 3 steps again.

 This is more than likely no accident or bug. We are willing to bet Google has been secretly planning to introduce this this as a feature in a future update. The coding must be there. If it is a bug, though, we agree with Smackel that is is about the coolest one we have seen.

 [via ChromeSpot]

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