Google Chrome is one of thebest browsers on Android— and elsewhere. This makes sense, as Google puts a ton of resources into ensuring that it stays the top-dog in terms of market share. However, when you look atChrome for Android, you might notice that it feels a little long in the tooth. Sure, the browser may have recently received a Material You theme overhaul, but other than that, the basic way that you interact with it has stayed the same for years. Things are different on iOS, and Apple keeps its pre-installed browser Safari feeling fresh with significantly improvements.
These days, Imuchprefer to use Safari on a day-to-day basis, and I’m not happy with Chrome whenever I’m using some of myfavorite Android phones.
Bottom-based interface
Apple took a leap of faith and decided to switch Safari over to a bottom-based interface. The step was initially met with criticism from loyal Apple fans, so the company added an optional screen-top interface, but the default way to use Safari is with the address bar and most control elements at the bottom. This makes Safari great for one-handed and ergonomic use. Typing in another address or reaching the tab switcher doesn’t involve overstretching your thumbs all the way across the screen and forcing you to adjust the grip on your phone. Sure, you still need to tap some options at the top, but the majority of interactions happen at the bottom.
Compare that to the state of Chrome on Android. Google experimented with a bottom-based interface for a long time, but ultimately decided to scrap the “Chrome Duet” experiment altogether (the codename under which Chrome’s bottom-based interface was developed). The decision was met with an immediate outcry from the enthusiast crowd that was already using this bottom interface through hidden Chrome flags, but Google has so far stood its ground. It’s a shame, because handling Chrome is a significantly less ergonomic experience than Safari. To open new tabs, type in an address or search term, or to get to the overflow menu, you always need to stretch your thumb to the top of the screen.
What makes this more infuriating is the fact that Chrome for iOS puts a lot of options in a bottom bar that simply doesn’t exist on Android. On iOS, Chrome offers backwards and forwards buttons at the bottom, along with the tab switcher, a new tab button, and the overflow menu. The address bar remains up top, but this is already so much more than what Chrome users get on Android.
That’s not to say that Safari’s interface is perfect, nor always intuitive. To reach the important overflow menu that gives you options like page zoom, website translation, and other website settings, you need to tap a nondescript “aA” button in the left of the address bar. It’s true that Android’s vertical ellipsis isn’t much more descriptive than that, but at least Google and third-party developers consistently use it throughout apps to denote a menu that lists more options. The unintuitive, weird “aA” menu is pretty much exclusive to Safari on iOS.
Some of my complaints here are easily enough resolved by switching to a third-party browser on Android. Virtually all other popular browsers for the OS add at leastsomebuttons and tools to the bottom of the screen, even if most retain the address bar at the top by default. Come on, Google, there is definitely proof that people are interested in using an interface like this.
All the smooth gestures
Another aspect where Safari takes the crown is gestures. Once you know your way around Safari using them, you might never need to tap a button again for dealing with your tabs. Safari lets you switch between tabs by swiping left or right on the address bar. It even has a clever trick to teach you how to use this feature. The browser shows a small preview of the next tab’s address bar to the left or right of the one for the currently active tab (depending on how many tabs you have opened and which one you’re looking at). This indicates that you can just swipe left or right to open it, making it easy to compare two websites on the fly, without having to use split-screen or any other tricks like it.
My favorite gesture is probably the one for opening a new tab. Once you’ve reached your right-most tab, you’re able to just swipe one more time, like you’d want to open a tab to the right of it that doesn’t yet exist — Safari will then open a new tab. I find this much faster and more convenient than long-pressing the tab switcher and hittingNew tabor opening the tab switcher to do this, which are options available on both Chrome and Safari. Safari also lets you quickly access your tab overview by swiping up from the address bar, and you can close tabs you don’t need anymore from this view with a swipe to the left.
Chrome, to its credit, is capable of most of these gestures, too. You can swipe left and right on the address bar to switch between tabs, and you can swipe down from the address bar to open the tab switcher — you can even swipe away tabs you no longer need. However, the gestures feel a lot less fluid and appear more tacked-on — plus, there aren’t similarly clever indicators that you can switch tabs in this manner, not like what we get on Safari. Combined with the bottom navigation, the way Safari handles gestures is once again more ergonomic than what Chrome does.
This may be sound like nitpicking, but smooth animations and clear transitions between pages make it easier to interact with technology. Not everyone knows their way around their phone as well as people in the tech bubble, and fluid, logical animations help a great deal in helping users understand shortcuts and how their phone’s navigation functions. Plus, I also have some gripes with Safari in this category. For some reason, it’s not possible to close tabs in the tab overview by swiping to the right — left is the only way to go.
Extension support
One final thing that Safari has going for it is extension support. Given how Apple is known to love its walled garden, this actually feels like quite the surprise. Safari for iOS supports a whole range of extensions that also work on its desktop counterpart, like password managers, ad and tracking blockers, CSS tweakers, couponing services, reading services, new tab customizers, grammar and spell checkers, and more.
To find out what’s hindering Google from adding extension support, we talked to Vivaldi CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner. He told us that in the open-source Chromium code (which Vivaldi also uses for its browsers) instructions concerning extensions are commented out for mobile. This means that it’s theoretically possible to enable extension support if the will were there. That’s also how browsers likeKiwiare able to support Chrome extensions on Android, though for third-party Chromium browsers like it, this support comes at a cost. For every single update, the developers have to ensure compatibility by checking if any of the extension code has broken — which is a significant hurdle in fast adoption of security patches and feature updates within Chromium code.
It’s possible that Google’s main motivation behind not allowing mobile extensions is ad blocking concerns. As long as Chrome remains the most-used browser on Android, Google doesn’t have much incentive to add features that could hurt its bottom line, even if there are more than enough ad blockers on Android. These are just a tad more complicated to use than a browser extension, though, which likely means that fewer people take advantage of these solutions than they might on desktop browsers.
Good artists copy, great artists steal
Chrome and its Chromium rendering engine may be unrivaled today, with the browser routinely winning benchmarking races. But that’s not all there is to a good browser. If Google wants to woo its users with features again, rather than just relying on its position as the default browser on Android, it needs to innovate on the feature front. Like we said, Safari isn’t the only browser that offers good ideas, so it’s time for Google to start looking at the competition — and downright steal what makes sense.
