The Unnecessary Chevron
In recent updates, Google Chrome introduced a “Tab Search” button—a small downward-facing chevron icon permanently pinned to the top left corner of the browser window (or top right on older builds). When clicked, it opens a dropdown menu allowing you to search through all your open tabs. While this is incredibly useful for users who keep dozens of tabs open across multiple windows, it is entirely redundant for minimalists who only keep three or four tabs open at a time. For these users, the chevron is simply an ugly piece of UI clutter that takes up valuable space on the title bar.
Removing the Search Icon
To eliminate this button and restore a cleaner, classic look to the top of your Chrome window, you must delve into the browser’s hidden experimental flags and forcibly disable the tab search feature.
Open Google Chrome and click into the main address bar. Type chrome://flags and press Enter to access the developer experiments page. At the very top, you will see a search box. Type Tab Search into this box. The results will filter down to a flag labelled “Enable Tab Search.” Click the dropdown menu situated to the right of this flag. It will currently be set to “Default”; click to change it to Disabled. Upon doing so, a blue button reading “Relaunch” will appear at the bottom right corner of your screen. Click it to restart the browser. When Chrome re-opens, the chevron icon will be completely gone, leaving you with a clean, uninterrupted tab bar.