How to Show Full URL in Google Chrome Browser

Starting with Google Chrome web browser version 76.0, it will hide parts of the URL displayed in the address bar (called omnibox for Chrome). Now it will hide the parts such as http or https or www. For example, if you visit https://www.trishtech.com/, it will only display trishtech.com in the address bar. Google developers give the reason for this change that users find these parts very confusing. For making it easy for the Chrome users to understand the URLs, they have done away with the technical parts and now will only display the actual domain name instead of the protocol used to fetch it.

Disable URL Hiding in Chrome Browser

Chrome hides scheme, trivial subdomains, and query strings from the URL. The scheme of a URL is the protocol used to access it http or https. Trivial subdomains are common subdomains used by websites such as www. Query strings are used for passing parameters to a web page such as ?search=apples. You can see where these parts fit in the following image:

Different Parts of a URLHowever, if you want to go back to the old state and want to see the full and complete URLs in your Chrome web browser, then you can follow these steps:

  1. Launch Chrome web browser, type chrome://flags in the address and and press Enter.
  2. In the search box, type Omnibox UI Hide. to find the experimental features we need.
  3. Disable these three features (change their state to Disabled) –
    • Omnibox UI Hide Steady State URL Scheme
    • Omnibox UI Hide Steady State URL Trivial Subdomains
    • Omnibox UI Hide Steady State URL Path, Query and Reference

    Disable URL Hiding in Chrome Browser

  4. Click on the Relaunch Now button to restart Chrome web browser with new settings.
  5. Now Chrome will no longer hide any part of the URL displayed in the address bar.

Disable URL Hiding in Chrome Browser

It should be noted that these changes are made only in the latest version (76+) of the Chrome web browser. If you are using a portable version of the Chrome web browser that chances are that you could be using an older version and you won’t notice this URL hiding feature in the web browser. And if you are an ordinary user, then perhaps you should keep the default settings and let it hide the parts of the actual URL.

9 comments

  1. Agreed!

    We desperately need more browser diversity to escape from the dictates of Google.

    Sadly, Firefox is also getting annoying in that there is no way to tell it not to “phone home” to check for updates. Even if you block that call home with Little Snitch or some other firewall, you get extremely annoying popups from Firefox telling you that it tried.

    WTB: a browser that displays full exact urls and won’t try to “call home” without permission.

  2. The workarounds no longer works with Chrome 80 and google’ve removed the page from their site. Developing and using Chrome is becoming more and more of a headache for me. From not being able to separate the URL and Search bars, to not being able to see the full URL, its getting dangerous to keep using Chrome. The mangled URL’s may be doing some airheads a favor, but most people know that different prefixes on the URL’s may end up going to a different web address, so they’re careful when typing. Instead Google makes the protocol disappear and we don’t know exactly where we’ve landed. It’s a big mistake from the Google Chrome team, something they’ll regret later on with all the pissed off developers and user. Hello Firefox again!

  3. Looks like there is a way!

    Visit chrome://omnibox/ and check “Show all details” under Display parameters

  4. These flags have disappeared:

    Omnibox UI Hide Steady State URL Scheme
    Omnibox UI Hide Steady State URL Trivial Subdomains
    Omnibox UI Hide Steady State URL Path, Query and Reference

  5. There doesn’t seem to be a way to set them to disable. Every time I do so and click Relaunch, they reset back to Default.

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