Make Chrome Refresh 2023 avoidable in the long term

[highbaser]

This is a feature request about handling Chrome Refresh 2023 in the future.

Google started to introduce a UI refresh, starting from M115. The change is called "Chrome Refresh 2023". There are many bug reports, UX issues and negative feedback about this change and Google seems to be stubborn enough not to pay attention and force it upon all of its users. With M125 Chromium release, Google is expiring (and later removing) the flags that can disalbe the changes of Chrome Refresh 2023.

From an advanced desktop user point of view this is an anti-feature that ruins the classic desktop experience (with mouse and keyboard), wastes vertical real estate, replaces icons to colorless unrecognizable ones. These changes are visually incompatible with a conventional desktop and makes the desktop user's life harder.

Chrome Refresh 2023 is already in latest nightly build of Brave (now: 1.67.30) as it's based on M124 and the feature is turned on, however not all anti-features seem to have been adopted. Here is a detailed list of what current Brave seems to have.

• Colorless wireframe icons in bookmark bar: Absent
  Please do not adopt! See: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/330743875
• Colorless wireframe icons in bookmark editor: Present
  Please consider reverting this change to have consistent looks between icons in the bookmark bar and in the bookmark editor.
  Colorless wireframe icons are harder to distinguish from text. Also, the "New folder" button color is harder to read in light orange than before (black). Comparison: brave-bookmark-editor.png
• Increased vertical padding (wasted real-estate) in expanded bookmark lists: Absent
  Please do not adopt! See: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/330589210
• Bold fonts in tab labels: Absent (but already in Chrome Canary 126.0.6433.0)
  Please do not adopt! See: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/335553327
• Too small fonts in the tab labels: Present
• Wasted vertical real-estate above tabs: Present
  See: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/332574933
  See: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/327022941
  Basically the tab bar of Brave now looks like the same as of Firefox, however the older tab bar was more compact and wasted less vertical real-estate. It would be better to have the more compact look back. Comparison: brave-tabs.png
• Increased vertical padding (wasted real-estate) in menus: Absent
  Please do not adopt! See: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/330753883

So basically I'm asking for the following changes related to Chrome Refresh 2023 manifestation in Brave.

1. Restore the icons in the bookmark editor to colorful ones, like they are in the bookmark bar.
2. Implement a configuration option under Settings > Appearance > Tabs that can restore the older compact tabs.
3. Increase font size (or at least font height) of tab labels.

Brave could be a great alternative for advanced desktop users who are disappointed or annoyed by the Chrome Refresh 2023.

Issues

Issues related to Chrome Refresh 2023, from the Chromium Bug Tracker.

• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/335553327
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/332574933
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/332081796
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/330842283
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/330743875
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/330753883
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/330589210
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/330443177
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/330373923
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/329953462
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/327022941
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41490387
• https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40947720

Negative user feedback

Negative feedback from mostly advanced users who suffered a UX degradation because of Chrome Refresh 2023.

• https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/269780757
• https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/269812926
• https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/269774466
• https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/269868881
• https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/269982965
• https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/269956094
• https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/269946774
• https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/269800018
• https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1c5jgmu/icons_in_chrome_tabs_are_misplaced/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1c695ef/how_to_get_tab_favicons_back_to_normal/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1c5zvnx/disabled_chrome_refresh_2023_and_customize_chrome/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1c5xeja/broken_icon_placements_after_update_how_to_fix/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1c6ette/why_are_my_tab_icons_higher_up_than_normal/

[rebron]

@highbaser Thanks for filing the issue, we're taking a look through your points. Also note that this tab design for tabs is still supported if you want to go back to the old look: brave://flags/#brave-horizontal-tabs-update

We won't touch that flag until we have a compact mode that will match your expectations for that compact style of toolbar.

[trlkly]

You seem to have slipped up and let some of the Chrome 2023 refresh through. The tab bar is fine, but the menus are now messed up. They take up a lot more space. The Brave menu no longer fits on my screen without having to scroll. And scrolling menus have always been bad UI.

Honestly, this was the main reason I switched to Brave, so I'm rather frustrated. I was expecting you to keep the ability to disable the Refresh until you could come up with "compact mode that will fit your expectations" as stated above.

[trlkly]

It's worse than I thought. I hadn't tried right-clicking yet. It still does this weird stuff where the menu won't take up the available space. Chromium right click menus have like 15-20 options, but sometimes the menu will only show 5 items. You have to scroll.

Please, please, PLEASE revert whatever change forced the new menus, or at least revert the ability to turn off Chrome 2023 Refresh, and default to it being off again until you can make menus compact again.

[n1kzzzzz]

Just switched to Brave a week ago, because of the newly forced atrocious Chrome UI, only to see it back in the latest Brave version. Having to scroll the context menu is just bad, I've made comparison the old menu vs. the new one in Chrome, it's literally 40% larger, for no reason at all, so much wasted space...

[sasatefa2009]

I just switched to Microsoft Edge, they’re on Chromium 126 and they didn’t support the stupid Chrome Refresh 2023 theme, no need to disable flags or anything! so I’ll stick to Microsoft Edge for now

[MZPL]

I'd love to see a way to revert back to old menus too.

[jspatz]

I had to revert back to Brave 1.65 as the huge menus with items scrolling out of the viewport are unusable for me. I hope the Brave team can come up with a general solution for this, and allow users to opt-out of these Chromium/Chrome UX regressions -- I don't think that having normal desktop UX is too much to ask for a desktop application.

[arch-btw]

Thank you for making this report. I had to downgrade too.

Unfortunately not even disabling brave://flags/#brave-horizontal-tabs-update helps fix things anymore.
And neither do any of the other opt-out flags.

As @jspatz mentioned, the right click menus are way too large and items are scrolling out of view. (see also: #38706).

It's hard to understand why the chrome/chromium team keeps redesigning these things.

I'm not sure if I can mention other browsers, but the biggest competitor made/makes this exact same mistake. Only for people to have to mess around with css or js scripts to fix it.

Sometimes it appears as if things are being redesigned just for the sake of it, without any real purpose. A lot of people just want the basic tabs/menu's the way it has always been.

To be more specific, there are now also 3 spots with useless padding where people will now accidentally click:

(this is with brave://flags/#brave-horizontal-tabs-update disabled even)

There is no use case for this padding at all, nothing happens when you accidentally click on it and it's completely in the way.

All of that said, much respect to the Brave team for at least trying to keep the basic layout alive.

I hope these new layout problems can be fixed too.

[highbaser]

@rebron Could you please address the issues above too?

[bsclifton]

Hi folks

You seem to have slipped up and let some of the Chrome 2023 refresh through.

We intentionally rebase against Chromium and get all the updates. Please believe me - this has been a particularly painful one for us as the removal of the flag has caused a lot of grief in the codebase. Lots of UI regressions. We're doing our best to address specific items.

Instead of an issue asking "Revert Chrome Refresh 2023", I'd like to ask if there are specific things we can try to modify. Some folks have already done a great job calling those out above (spacing, etc). Those are things we can definitely address

@rebron and others are watching over this. But more specific items would be helpful - this issue (kind of a blanket issue) will likely be closed in favor of more specific issues that we can address.

[trlkly]

@bsclifton Like I said, the main issue for me is the change of how menus work. They not only have too much spacing, but also do not expand to fill the whole screen height anymore, leaving us with like 5 menu items, depending on where you click on the screen.

I note that Edge seems to have the same style of menus, but does not have this particular problem. The same is true of Firefox (though I know that's a completely different beast). And, while not entirely open source, it's possible that Vivaldi's ability to just use the native menus is available code.

That would be the ideal: just revert back to using the native menus of the OS. Or, at least, have an option to do so.

[trlkly]

Note that what I described above is already a separate bug: #39066

[highbaser]

@bsclifton I'm not sure why you're asking for specific issues as I opened the issue with linking to specific ones. Also I did my own testing and enumeration about which issues are present (or will likely be present after Chromium rebases) in Brave. So what you're asking for is already done. All of these are painful UX issues, especially those related to increased padding and vertical real-estate wasting, unreadable/blurry fonts, unrecognizable icons. You can see the details in the opening post, with links to issue trackers containing screenshots and videos.

[Undefined-User]

Restoring the experimental flag deleted by Google and avoiding code conflicts is a difficult task, and I am still waiting for the solution of other Chromium browsers. For those Google Chrome users who want to continue using the old appearance during the waiting period, I found the download links of M122 and M123 versions and shared them with you (I am very sorry that this content is not related to Brave browser but there are no other platforms to discuss this). M122 has an "Extend" version on Windows and macOS, which fixes more vulnerabilities than the normal version.

Here is the link: https://gist.github.com/Undefined-User/6e8c3bd7623c168ac3bb3f8dcbe9d562

[trlkly]

@Undefined-User Supermium has employed the solution of backing out the patch and then sticking with M126 and the extended patches (I believe from Chrome OS LTS). I'm not sure what their plans are when that version expires.

But I think Thorium has the solution that Brave could use: they are creating their own UI patch that reverts most of the changes. A beta version already reverts the most important parts, and it is going to be a separate patch file. It is intended for other browsers to use.

I also note that Vivaldi doesn't have this issue. It has its own customizable web-based UI, and an option for a "compact" menu. The main downsides are that it has no tab search drop down button, and they have explicitly said they will not retain Mv2 compatibility. Oh, and their built-in adblock is old and not very good compared to Brave's or uBlock Origin.

(I am looking into adding back the tab search button, as it's only the button that's missing. The URL for the dropdown still works. And, like I said, the browser UI is customizable.)

[Shizzz104]

@trlkly
Thank you for mentioning Thorium. Finished migrating few days ago, and so far feels alright.
Been a bit of a wild ride this year: Chrome -> Chromium -> Chromium Ungoogled -> Brave. And now Thorium.
Can't stand the new UI, especially when I have to scroll a lot more through bookmarks in folders.

[NicholasFlamy]

I'm going to jump in and say, there are 2 main things I would like changed:

1. The bookmarks, mainly when you're looking at bookmarks in a folder. They are so wide, but mainly they are too tall. At one point I could see all the bookmarks in one folder I had without scrolling, after one of the UI changes, it requires scrolling from the currently visible bookmarks to about 2 more sets of about the same number of bookmarks.

2. The tabs could also be improved a bit. If I have a lot of tabs, I don't want so much padding that I can't see sh*t. The first image has an extreme example that even reducing the padding wouldn't do much other than show the first letter but the second image shows where padding reduction would likely allow a whole word: