Google Chrome browser could be getting nifty Windows 11-style scrollbars

Overlay scrollbars supposedly set to be tested in Chrome soon

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Chrome could soon getWindows 11-style overlay scrollbars, or at least they’re set to go into testing onGoogle’sbrowseraccording to the grapevine.

An overlay scrollbar simply means that the bar for scrolling on the right side of the browser window is pretty much hidden – it’s just a very thin line – and it only pops fully into existence when you move the mouse near to it, or over it. This gives a neater look, and provides a touch more real-estate to show the contents of a web page in the browser window when you’re not scrolling around (or when using your mouse wheel to scroll, of course).

As spotted by Leopeva64-2 onReddit(viaNeowin), overlay scrollbars have been in testing on Edge since August 2021, whenMicrosoftpromisedit would bring this feature to Chromium – and therefore presumablyChrome, eventually.

Well, it seems like that’s finally happening, because a fresh patch in Chromium Gerrit has witnessed a comment from a Microsoft staff member stating that overlay scrollbars will soon be tested in Chrome (presumably beginning with Canary, the earliest preview build).

Analysis: Bug squashing will hopefully proceed at a speedy pace

Also in this patch, Microsoft developers have said they are trying to fix a glitch wherebyYouTubein full-screen mode is bugged when the overlay scrollbars are enabled. Doubtless there will be other wrinkles which need to be smoothed over as this work progresses – assuming this move happens as anticipated – so it could take some time for this feature to appear in the release version of Chrome.

When it does, overlay scrollbars should be present in Chrome with not justWindows 11, but also onWindows 10, because the functionality came to both operating systems with theEdge browser. Fingers crossed we don’t have to wait long, at least for those who like this style of scrollbars; for those who don’t, there’ll doubtless be an option to turn them off.

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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