When you open a new tab in the Google Chrome app for Android or iOS and tap the search bar, Chrome drops down a list of suggestions before you even begin typing. By default, this list is populated with “Trending Searches”—a curated list of popular news topics, celebrity gossip, and viral queries currently spiking in your geographic region.
If you use your mobile browser strictly for work, or if you simply find celebrity gossip distracting when you are trying to quickly look up a recipe or a hardware spec, these unsolicited suggestions are highly annoying. They clutter up your screen and often include topics you have absolutely zero interest in.
Fortunately, Google provides a straightforward toggle to banish these trending suggestions from your search bar forever.
How to Turn Off Trending Searches on Mobile
You can disable these suggestions directly from the Google Search settings page within your browser.
- Open the Google Chrome app on your smartphone or tablet.
- Open a new tab and navigate to google.com.
- In the top-left corner of the Google homepage, tap the three horizontal lines (the hamburger menu) to open the sidebar.
- Tap on Settings from the slide-out menu.
- Scroll down the page until you find the section labeled Autocomplete with trending searches.
- By default, the radio button for “Show popular searches” will be selected. Tap the radio button for Do not show popular searches to change the setting.
- Scroll all the way down to the very bottom of the page and tap the blue Save button.
A small pop-up will appear confirming your preferences have been saved. From now on, when you tap the search bar in Chrome, you will only see your own recent, personal search history (or nothing at all), completely free of viral news trends.