How to Make Google Chrome More Touch-Friendly

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Out of the box, Chrome isn't as touch-friendly as Microsoft's Edge browser. However, you can tweak some hidden settings in Chrome for more touch support for your Windows tablet or touchscreen PC.

The experimental settings below will force Chrome to recognize your taps better and add features like new copying and pasting buttons for the URL bar. Choose which settings you want to enable from the list below or try all of them.

1. Type chrome://flags in the address bar and click Enter.

2. Press Ctrl+F to open the search box.

3. Search for the settings below and change them:

  • Enable touch events: Change from Automatic to Enabled. This will make Chrome always offer touchscreen support, such as pinching to zoom and tapping and dragging to scroll.

  • Link Disambiguation Popup: Click Enable. This will zoom into links when there are two or more links next to each other, so you can avoid tapping on the wrong link.

  • Touch initiated drag and drop: Change from Default to Enabled. This will allow you to long-press on an draggable element in Chrome, such as an image, to drag and drop it. (This setting doesn't seem to work for me, but you could give it a shot.)

  • Enable touch based text editing: Change from Default to Enabled. This will pop up Copy, Cut, Paste, and Delete options when you click in a text field. Note: You won't see this setting in the latest version of Chrome (49.0), since it is rolled in with the "Enable touch events" option, but if you're using an older version of Chrome, you can enable this option.

4. Click the Relaunch button at the bottom of the flags page to restart Chrome with your new settings.

The settings above are small tweaks that could make tapping away in Chrome easier. Additionally, if you want to get an on-screen keyboard to show up whenever you tap a text field, try the Virtual Keyboard extension. It doesn't work for every text field, but can be a timesaver when you're searching Google.

Chrome Browser Tips

Melanie Pinola