By default, whenever you rest your mouse cursor over a tab in Google Chrome, a large pop-up card appears displaying the page title, URL, and a thumbnail preview of the website. While Google designed these “Tab Hover Cards” to help users navigate when they have dozens of tiny tabs open, many people find them visually distracting and intrusive, especially when reading text near the top of the browser.
If you prefer the cleaner, classic Chrome experience where hovering over a tab only displays a small, unobtrusive tooltip with the page title, you can disable the large preview cards using Chrome’s hidden experimental settings menu.
How to Turn Off Tab Hover Cards
Because this setting isn’t available in the standard Chrome settings menu, you will need to use Chrome Flags to modify the browser’s behavior.
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click on the address bar at the top, type
chrome://flags, and press Enter. This will open the hidden Experiments page. - In the search box at the top of the Experiments page, type Tab Hover Card Images.
- You should see the matching setting appear below. Click the dropdown menu next to it (which is likely set to “Default”) and change it to Disabled.
- If you want to disable the cards entirely (not just the images), clear the search box and search for Tab Hover Cards, then set that option to Disabled as well.
- At the bottom right corner of the screen, a large Relaunch button will appear. Click it to restart Chrome.
Once Chrome reopens, your open tabs will be exactly where you left them, but resting your mouse over them will no longer trigger a massive preview image. If you ever want the feature back, simply return to the Flags menu and reset the options to “Default”.