Chrome is one of the most popular browsers out in the market today. It has earned this credit because of two things in particular. One is the security and reliability it provides. Second is its speed.
Speed is a very important aspect of any good web browser. The ability to go to marked websites quickly can come very handy when in a pinch for time.
What Is The Bookmarks Bar?
Google Chrome’s bookmarks feature comes in very handy during this. Users can create shortcuts to their favorite browsers and access them in one click.
The bookmarks bar is displayed just below the address bar (Omnibar according to Google) and contains the shortcuts to all your saved favorite pages. From here you can navigate to any saved page within one click.
Why Remove The Bookmarks Bar?
Although it is a very handy feature, the bookmarks bar is a privacy concern for many. You may be wondering why.
The problem with the bookmark bar is that whenever you bookmark a site, there is no provision to hide the bookmarks bar. This means that whenever you access a private website and bookmark it, it will show up in the bookmarks bar on a new tab and your homepage.
- A simple workaround would be to move the bookmark into a folder. But that won’t be reliable as well, as one can simply hover over the bookmarks to access it.
How To Hide Bookmarks In Chrome
If you too are concerned with the privacy of your bookmarks, here I will show you how to hide bookmarks in Google Chrome.
# FIX 1: Disable Bookmarks Bar
Google Chrome developers listened to the users and introduced a feature to disable the bookmarks bar in Google Chrome. Is you are on an older version of Google Chrome; you can update to the latest build to access this feature.
- On your system, open Chrome.
- Click the hamburger menu (≡).
- Select Settings.
- Under Appearance subsection, turn off the toggle next to ‘Show bookmarks bar’
This will turn off the bookmarks bar in Google Chrome.
# FIX 2: Use Bookmarks Menu Option
You can alternatively use the bookmarks menu to turn off the bookmarks bar as well.
Follow these steps to turn off the bookmarks bar using the Bookmarks menu.
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click on the hamburger menu (≡).
- Click on Settings.
- Hover on Bookmarks to open the additional settings.
- Click on Show bookmarks bar.
Clicking on this once will turn off the bookmarks bar.
You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + B to turn off the bookmarks bar as well. This provides you an easier way of turning off the bookmarks bar in Google Chrome.
Using this keyboard shortcut again, you can also show bookmarks bar in Chrome.
# FIX 3: Remove ‘Other Bookmarks’ Folder
You may have noticed the other bookmarks folder in Chrome. This folder contains the extra bookmarks and is persistently present in the bookmarks bar.
To remove the bookmarks bar, you can try removing the content from this folder into a new folder or simply delete the contents of this folder.
Once you remove all the bookmarks from this folder, you will see no Other bookmarks folder in the bookmarks bar. This will make it easier for you to remove the bookmarks bar.
# FIX 4: Open Blank Page At Startup
When you launch Google Chrome, you can see a new tab page that has a bookmarks bar in the top.
To remove this, you can set a blank page as your homepage. This will open a blank page with no bookmarks bar. To set a blank page, follow these steps:
- Open Google Chrome on your system.
- Navigate to chrome://settings to open the Settings page.
- Scroll down to the ‘On startup’ subsection.
- Here select “Open a specific page or set of pages”
- Enter the following URL in the address input space provided:
about:blank - Restart Chrome.
Now when you launch Chrome, you will see a blank page with no bookmarks bar in sight.
Wrapping Up
Citing security concerns, it is very plausible that some users might want to remove Chrome bookmarks. Now you know how to hide bookmarks in Google Chrome. Following fix 2, you also know how to show bookmarks bar in Chrome as well. Did you find this useful? Do comment below if you are concerned about the privacy and want to discuss further the same.