The latest Canary version of Google Chrome includes a nifty feature that automatically selects a color scheme for the browser based on the background displayed when you open a new tab. It was the first feature Discovered by u/Leopeva64-2 on Reddit, which shows how the browser’s address bar and user interface color scheme are automatically adjusted when the new tab background is changed. It used to be possible to manually change Chrome’s color scheme to one of your choice, but this simplifies the process.
According to Google, the feature “lets you set the display color based on the color of the background image when you change the background image in a new tab” and is exclusive to Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems as well as Google’s own. ChromeOS and Fuchsia operating systems.
We were able to enable the Customize Chrome Color Extraction feature in Chrome Canary (specifically 110.0.5418.0) version 110 to test this for ourselves. They seem to work best with more colorful backgrounds, while dark backgrounds turn Chrome’s interface a muddy black, brown, or gray color – and aren’t much of an improvement over the default color scheme. We were able to get it to work with Google’s own background images, although when we uploaded our own images, the automatic color matching option didn’t work. It is not clear if this is a bug or intentional.
The feature is not enabled by default. Alternatively, if you want to try it out, you need to enable the Chrome flag “chrome://flags/#custom-chrome-color-extraction”. Once it’s launched, open a new Chrome tab, click the pencil icon at the bottom-right of the new tab window, and choose a new background to see how the color scheme is reflected in the Chrome interface. Once you choose a wallpaper, the color scheme will continue across different tabs as you browse the web.
There’s no word on when or if the feature will be widely adopted, but given that it’s currently a subscription feature in the Canary version of Google Chrome (the first beta version), we don’t expect widespread adoption for a long time, at least a few months.
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