Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A new update is adding a dedicated back button to Chrome on Android devices.
- It also introduces a new “Site controls” feature in the three-dot menu.
- The “Add to Home screen” option has also been renamed to “Install and create shortcut.”
Chrome for Android has plenty of useful features, and Google keeps adding more every now and then. However, there’s one quality-of-life feature that’s been missing from Chrome for Android, even though it’s been available in the iOS app for a while: a dedicated back button. Fortunately, Google is now fixing that.
Chrome for Android version 150 is now rolling out, and it’s finally introducing the back button on Android devices (h/t 9to5Google). With this update, the browser’s three-dot menu now displays both the forward and back arrows side-by-side. Earlier versions of the browser only had the forward arrow button.
With the back button taking up space in Chrome’s three-dot menu, the other icons have shifted as well. Google has removed the site info button from the menu and added a new “Site controls” option instead. The “Add to home screen” option has also been renamed to “Install and create shortcut.”
While the update has started rolling out, it has clearly not reached everyone just yet. We were unable to spot the new back button on most of our Android phones running the latest version of Chrome from the Play Store. On my devices, the new site controls option is also not available, but I did spot the “Install and create shortcut” option in the menu.
It’s possible that this is yet another one of Google’s infamous phased server-side rollouts. You can try updating to the latest version of Chrome from the Play Store and see if the back button shows up on your Android phone.
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