It may eventually have turned out to be the proverbial storm in a tea up. Over last weekend, there was a mini-riot in the Internet world over a new UI design tweak for Chrome by Google. Chrome 69 showed the user’s Google profile photo in the status bar when he signed into a Google product.
Flash! Here’s Google Chrome UI update.
Now it has become clear that when the user is signed into Chrome he has NOT also signed into ‘Chrome Sync’. The profile photo is onyl meant to serve as a reminder to the user that he is signed into a Google service, not the browser, in Google’s words.
Google has now come out with even more clarity on this. It said on its official blog that “there is an extra step required to turn on Chrome Sync.”
We’re updating our (Google Chrome) UIs to better communicate a user’s sync state. We want to be clearer about your sign-in state and whether or not you’re syncing data to your Google Account.
Zach says Google recently made a change to simplify the way Chrome handles sign-in. Now, when you sign into any Google Website, you’re also signed into Chrome with the same account. You’ll see your Google Account picture right in the Chrome UI, so you can easily see your sign-in status. When you sign out, either directly from Chrome or from any Google website, you’re completely signed out of your Google Account.
Google says it had “heard—and appreciate—your feedback.”
We’re going to make a few updates in the next release of Chrome (Version 70, released mid-October) to better communicate our changes and offer more control over the experience.While we think sign-in consistency will help many of our users, we’re adding a control that allows users to turn off linking web-based sign-in with browser-based sign-in—that way users have more control over their experience. For users that disable this feature, signing into a Google website will not sign them into Chrome.
- We’re updating our UIs to better communicate a user’s sync state. We want to be clearer about your sign-in state and whether or not you’re syncing data to your Google Account.
- We’re also going to change the way we handle the clearing of auth cookies. In the current version of Chrome, we keep the Google auth cookies to allow you to stay signed in after cookies are cleared. We will change this behavior that so all cookies are deleted and you will be signed out.
Image Credit: Google
