Trust us, it’s changed. We think?
Google Chrome has been around for years, but when the first beta version was released for Windows back in 2008, the browser had a very different-looking icon than it does today. While the iconic Chrome orb has kept the same basic design elements and colors, its look has progressively gotten flatter over the years — first in 2011 and later in 2014. Now Chrome continues that trend with its first logo tweak in 8 years, and while the changes might look pretty subtle, these are all about making the icon more flexible and adaptable across platforms and their respective design languages.
Chrome designer Elvin Hu details what’s changing for us. The icon employs new shades of green, red, yellow, and blue that are supposed to be more vibrant and striking, and the subtle shadows previously present in the outer ring have been completely removed to achieve an almost totally flat look — “almost” because it does use a very slight gradient in an attempt to mitigate an “unpleasant color vibration” between some of these heavily contrasting shades. Otherwise, it’s flatter than a piece of paper.
Beyond adjusting the colors, Chrome is also refining some proportions — the inner blue circle becomes noticeably bigger, and the outer ring is thinner. All of these changes are being done in order to “align with Google’s more modern brand expression.” But honestly — a lot of these are so understated that you probably wouldn’t notice if we weren’t telling you about them.
Maybe the most impactful change is how Google is adapting the icon to other platforms. The Chrome icon now takes steps to blend in with UI design cues on the many operating systems it’s available. For Windows 10 and 11, for instance, the icon takes on a clearly gradated design to meld better with other icons in your taskbar, while on macOS, it takes on a neomorphic 3D look, just like Apple system apps. On Chrome OS, it uses brighter colors and no extra gradients, and the beta app on iOS has a special blueprint-like icon as a nod to other Apple beta/developer apps.
The Chrome browser takes many forms and tailors its experience to whatever platform it’s available on, and as such, Google felt it correct that its branding and icon should also adapt with the platform. The company explored a number of other, less subtle design changes to the Chrome icon, including introducing more negative space, but ultimately went with this adaptive (if not still very familiar) new icon.
Chrome’s updated icon has been spotted in the latest Canary branch, and should roll out to everyone over the weeks to come.
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