Chrome for Android now lets you preview pages, no need to always open new tabs

In its latest update, the Google Chrome app for Android has received a new "Preview page" option. With it, users can now preview web pages without needing to open them completely in the same window or in a separate tab. When done browsing through the page that's being previewed, the user can choose to close it or fully open it in its own tab.

If this feature seems familiar, it is because we've seen it tested by Google as early as 2018, then known as "Sneak Peek", in the developer and Canary versions of Google Chrome for Android.

While "Preview page" might seem like a niche feature at first, it has the potential to help Android Chrome users stay organized, as it's no longer needed to fully open links in new tabs just to see what's inside.

For example, when you're browsing PhoneArena, you can open an article via Chrome's new "Preview tab" feature without actually needing to leave the homepage or deal with more than one tabs. This feature could also come in handy when researching topics on Wikipedia and in many other scenarios.

How to use the new Google Chrome "Preview tab" feature

Make sure you're using Google Chrome on Android and it's updated to its latest version. Then simply open any website and follow the steps below.

Step 1: Press and hold over a link

In our example we're going to use the "Asus ROG Phone 5 review" link. When you press and hold a link like that one, a popup menu will appear, as shown below.

Step 2: Tap on "Preview page"

When you tap on the new "Preview page" option, the link will open in a popup window over your current page. When you're done exploring the page that's being previewed, you can proceed to either close it or open it in its own tab and continue exploring it.

Step 3: Press "X" to close the previewed page or the icon next to it to open it fully

Alternatively, you can press and slide down the preview page to close it. And again, this was all done within a single open tab, no tab switching needed.