I use Chrome a lot, but I have never enjoyed opening its three-dot menu. Every time I need a specific setting, I end up clicking through submenus and squinting at long lists of options. The good news is that Google is fixing this, and the latest Chrome Canary build gives us a working preview.

Leopeva64 posted a demo on X of the search box inside Chrome’s redesigned menu. In earlier builds, the box was there but did nothing when you typed in it. That’s no longer the case. Type a few letters, and Chrome now pulls up matching browser commands, bookmarks, and websites you visited recently.

Why will you love the new menu search?

The biggest win for me is that I no longer need to remember where Google tucked a particular option. I can type its name and pick it from the list. The same goes for bookmarks, which are much easier to find when you don’t have to scroll through folders.

Chrome groups the results by type, with commands, bookmarks, and history shown separately. I appreciate this small touch, as it keeps a bookmark from getting mixed up with a setting that has a similar name.

Chrome’s menu gets a much-needed makeover

Google has given the whole menu a fresh layout. The New tab, New window, and New incognito window entries have become large buttons, and the other controls now sit in neat, block-style groups. The result is a menu that is easier to scan.

In Chrome Canary, Google is testing removing the scroll arrows that let you automatically scroll to reveal hidden items when you hover over them in the 3-dot menu. They also added a scrollbar, and the search box at the top and the footer are now pinned so they are always visible.

Scrolling has changed too. Google removed the small arrows at the top and bottom of the menu and added a standard scrollbar. The search box stays fixed at the top, and Settings, Help, and Exit stay fixed at the bottom, so only the middle section moves when you scroll. I like this, as search and Settings are always within reach.