The new Chrome interface is now live. Update the browser to version 69 and you can use it. Part of the new design involves a revamp of the New Tab page. There are now ten speed dial spots and the thumbnail previews are gone. They’ve been replaced with website favicons/icons. If you don’t like the new design, you can disable it. Before you do though, you should give it a chance since you can now edit the speed dial in Chrome.
Edit Chrome Speed Dial
Open the New Tab page and hover the mouse cursor over one of the speed dial websites. You will see a button at the top right corner that doesn’t delete it like before. Click it.
A little window will open that lets you edit the URL of the website i.e., the speed dial. You can edit the name that appears under the speed dial which is really useful if Chrome caches the incorrect title tag for a website. If you want to delete a website, you can just click the Remove button.
The new look of the New Tab page is a lot like what Firefox has had for a while now. Firefox still has a richer New Tab page; it has highlights i.e., the websites you visit most frequently, and Top Sites which is basically the speed dial.
Firefox lets you edit your speed dial so that if it has picked up the wrong website for the speed dial, you can always edit it and add back websites you actually need. Chrome’s speed dial updated based on usage which made it both good and bad and we have to say, it’s just better to let users choose what they want.
If you’ve upgraded to the new version of Chrome, it’s a good idea to look around and explore all the new features. You can now use a local image as the background for the New Tab page. There’s also an option to use Chrome backgrounds. In the older versions of Chrome, an extension was required to change the background and that meant that performance dragged down and Chrome used up more memory.
The Chrome Backgrounds allow you to get a new background image without having to set it yourself. To change the background, open a new tab and click the cog wheel icon at the bottom right. It will give you options to use either a local image or Chrome backgrounds.