Google Chrome Adding Option to Always Show Full URLs

Google is working on providing Chrome users with an option to set the browser to always show full URLs for all websites they visit.

At the moment, the option to always show full URLs can only be enabled using an experimental flag on Google Chrome Canary version 83 and it can be accessed via the Omnibox context menu by Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS users.

As we'll also show below, Google has a long history of working towards hiding the protocol and of what they call trivial subdomains or special-case subdomains from the URLs displayed in Chrome's address bar.

How to reenable full URLs in Chrome Canary

Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS users who utilize Google's Chrome Canary can configure their browsers to show the full URLs for all websites using the omnibox-context-menu-show-full-urls experimental flag.

The newly added flag is designed to provide Chrome Canary users with an omnibox context menu option that will prevent URL elisions aka the removal of some URL elements Google considers not important.

To do this, you have to go through the following steps:

1. Go to chrome://flags/#omnibox-context-menu-show-full-urls.

2. Click the drop-down menu on the right side of the flag to select 'Enabled'

3. Restart the web browser.

Afterward, you will be able to find an 'Always show full URLs' Omnibox context menu option that will tell Chrome to display the entire URL, without eliding any components.

A slimmed-down or early version of this option has already been rolled out to some users of Google Chrome version 80, as BleepingComputer was also able to confirm.

The 'Show URL' option allows them to enable full URLs on a per-page basis — the setting doesn't stick though as it will be forgotten after refreshing the page.

As it is currently being tested Google Chrome Canary version 83.0, the 'Always show full URLs' Omnibox context menu option will most likely roll out once the stable version Google Chrome will be released.

Out of sight, out of mind

The WWW and M subdomains together with the protocol part (e.g., HTTP, HTTPS, or FTP) of the URL were initially stripped from Chrome's address bar with the release of Chrome 69 in September 2018.

Following users' outcry opposing this change, Google reversed the decision but, once again, hid them from URLs shown in the address bar for users of  Chrome 76 on desktop and Android devices.

"The Chrome team values the simplicity, usability, and security of UI surfaces," as product manager Emily Schechter said at the time.

"To make URLs easier to read and understand, and to remove distractions from the registrable domain, we will hide URL components that are irrelevant to most Chrome users," she added. "We plan to hide 'https' scheme and special-case subdomain 'www' in Chrome omnibox on desktop and Android in M76."

Google did leave in an option to have it reversed, as users were still able to enable full URLs in the Omnibox by enabling the temporary-unexpire-flags-m76 flag. However, that lasted until Chrome 79 was released as that flag was permanently removed.

TIL (Thanks Emily!) that if you have the Suspicious Site Reporter browser extension enabled, Chrome 76 doesn't hide the "https://www" at the front of the omnibox. pic.twitter.com/EhH7ZywpZd

— Eric Lawrence (@ericlaw) July 31, 2019

The only way to see the full website address while using Chrome 79 or a newer version is to click twice in the address bar to edit the URL or to install Google's Suspicious Site Reporter Chrome extension.

More recently, Google has also started testing displaying the search query in the Chrome address bar instead of the actual URL of the loaded page when performing searches on Google.

This experimental feature is currently called "Query in Omnibox" and it has been available as a Google Chrome flag since Chrome 71 but it is disabled by default. 

"People have a really hard time understanding URLs. They’re hard to read, it’s hard to know which part of them is supposed to be trusted, and in general, I don’t think URLs are working as a good way to convey site identity," Adrienne Porter Felt, Chrome's engineering manager said in a Wired interview,

"So we want to move toward a place where web identity is understandable by everyone—they know who they’re talking to when they’re using a website and they can reason about whether they can trust them."

H/T Techdows