Despite its dubious privacy policies and anti-competitive business practices, the quality of Google’s products has rarely been in doubt. With their clean and friendly designs, tools such as Chrome, Gmail, Maps, Drive and Photos are easy – and free – to use on any device, so it’s no wonder they’ve become so embedded in our lives.
But Google’s constant innovation has a variable effect on the sites, software and apps we use every day. Features are added and removed on a whim, some problems are fixed while others are ignored (or created), and familiar options are redesigned, renamed and relocated - for better or worse.
Some experts believe Google’s standards are slipping, at least in its search results. A year-long study by German researchers noticed “a trend toward simplified, repetitive and potentially AI-generated content”, which meant low-quality results were being pushed up its search rankings (see www.snipca.com/49443).
Thankfully, there are plenty of new ways to restore Google to its former glory. In this feature, we reveal the hidden settings you must tweak, the new features you should try and the third-party tools you can install, to improve your favourite Google products and services. We haven’t included YouTube, because we covered it in depth in our ‘What you must change on YouTube’ Cover Feature in Issue 675 (get it from www.snipca.com/49442).
WHAT YOU CAN DO
• Stop Chrome tabs using too much memory
• Remove annoying adverts from your Gmail inbox
• Improve the quality of Google’s search results
• Apply dark mode to Google Maps on your PC
• Hide your private photos and videos from Google
• Share files easily between your Android devices and PC
• Scan paper documents directly to Google Drive
IMPROVE GOOGLE CHROME
Restore Chrome’s classic download manager
The most controversial change Google made to Chrome in the last six months was to relocate its download manager. Previously, when you downloaded files they were shown in a bar along the bottom of the browser window, which let you easily monitor and open your active and recent downloads.
The download bar has now been replaced with a ‘Downloads bubble’, which appears on the toolbar in Chrome’s top-right corner (1 in our screenshot right) when you start downloading a file.
Many Chrome users dislike the change because it makes your downloads more difficult to track. Frustratingly, Google has now blocked all the workarounds that let you restore the download manager to its former position, and has ignored the many complaints on its Chrome Help site. “Is Google trying to make Chrome unusable?” asked one of dozens of similar threads on Reddit (www.snipca.com/49399).
The best solution we’ve found is to install the extension Filebar (). Although this doesn’t disable the Downloads bubble, it displays your downloads in
