How to Disable Tab Hover Cards In Google Chrome

Last updated: November 2021

If you find yourself wondering why there is now a pesky card appearing in your Google Chrome, chances are you were opted into a Google Experiment called Tab Hover Cards. This experiment shows a preview of the information on the page in the same pop-up as a tooltip previously. The only issue with this new pop-up is it’s about 5x bigger than its predecessor, which prompts the question “how do I disable this experiment in my browser?”

1. Navigate to chrome://flags/ in your browser. You will now be placed in a window where you can access all the “experiments” currently available in the Google Chrome browser.

2. Search for “tab hover” in the search box on this page. You’ll notice there is more than one experiment relating to tab hovering by default, both the classic “hover card” and “hover card for images” work similarly — displaying a box with a preview of results for a given tab.

Hover Cards in chrome://flags/

3. Click the dropdown to the right of the experiment, and choose “Disabled.”

Disabling Hover Cards in chrome://flags/

4. You’ll now need to restart your browser, but when you do, the pesky tab previews will be gone!

Google is always testing new workflow improvements in its Chrome browser, but not all of them are helpful. If you are ever opted into a new feature that you find cumbersome, it’s always good to navigate to the chrome://flags/ page to see what new experiments are currently enabled.