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You Can No Longer Disable “Pull to Refresh” on Chrome for Android

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Dinsan

Google Chrome for Android no longer has an option to disable “Pull to Refresh”. For people who don’t really like using this feature, this is pretty annoying. There was a way to disable this using a flag, but version 75 removed this flag too.

Disable Pull to Refresh Flag

chrome-android-merger

Chrome for Android, until version 75 had a flag that we could use to disable the pull to refresh effect. The flag was named “Disable pull to refresh” and was available at:

chrome://flags/#disable-pull-to-refresh-effect

That removed the only way that we had to disable this feature. When I saw a very long Google discussion thread where dozens of users were complaining that the flag is no longer available, I spent a few minutes trying to find a possible workaround. However, it looks like there is no way to disable this at the moment.

A Possible Workaround

There is a new workaround, now that the old workaround is gone. At least a handful of users have reported that this works. It did not work for me though.

Set chrome://flags/#overscroll-history-navigation to disabled and restart Chrome.

The only thing that you can do at the moment is to send feedback to Google using Chrome’s built-in tool. To do this, click Menu (three dots) > Help > Report an Issue.

I will definitely update this article as soon as a method or a workaround is available to disable pull to refresh.

Why Disable? Isn’t that a Feature?

Many of you might be wondering why anyone would want to disable something that was introduced as a feature. Pull to refresh for sure makes browsing easy, in most cases. After reading through many user reports and discussion threads, these are the most popular reasons that I found users mention while trying to disable it.

  • You might accidentally refresh a web form before completing it.
  • Many users complain that they don’t understand when a refresh is triggered.
  • There are at least a handful of users who mentioned that the refresh happens when they scroll up. I did not quite understand why this happens. But yes, this happens too.

Are you looking for a way to disable this feature too? Drop-in a comment and say hi.

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Dinsan

Digital Minimalist & Content Developer. He started using Google Chrome the day it was released. These days he is always on the bleeding edge, using the Canary build of both Chrome and Chrome OS as daily drivers. You’ll see him writing about upcoming Chrome features along with simple guides to get things done on Chrome.

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Comments

12 responses to “You Can No Longer Disable “Pull to Refresh” on Chrome for Android”

  1. AS Avatar
    AS

    I’m working on freeCodeCamp eventually and that feature is really annoying. It still can’t be disabled?

    Reply
  2. S Avatar
    S

    Opera supposedly still has this flag to let you disable the refresh…

    Reply
  6. Steven Avatar
    Steven

    I work in sales, and use my phone for work. This feature just cost me a commission. I am very upset right now.

    Reply
  7. Barkuti Avatar
    Barkuti

    Very piss poor decision enforcing this, as with anything enforced, and namely when it is a piece of shite.
    I switched from Chrome to Opera a few years ago. Opera is doing great overall, with two or three caveats. You can disable the pull to refresh effect in it, as S said above.
    I haven’t come back to Chrome, though. But I am now trying Kiwi browser, which is largely based on Chrome, and it inherits the fucking pull to refresh effect aswell.
    The nice point of Kiwi is that it supports Chrome extensions, this is why I am trying it. Browser extensions are something which I believe should be rather more widespread in Android by now.

    Reply
  8. Steven Avatar
    Steven

    I stoped using chrome android for purchases, due to the refresh occuring while scrolling up. Poor design choice

    Reply
  9. cosmo Avatar
    cosmo

    I was filling and completing a report on a website, uploaded an attachment just wanted to fill up some remaining inputs on final step, while scrolling down the whole page refreshed!.. hours of work and composition was gone instantly, extremely frustrating! 😤..

    Reply
  10. M Caruncle Avatar
    M Caruncle

    I hate using Chrome. The only time I use it is if I want to stay locked on desktop. FIREFOX has a regular setting to disable it. Better mobile browser in many ways!

    Reply
    1. Keywood Avatar
      Keywood

      A button to disable pull-to-refresh would be so easy to add. Especially if thousands of people ask for it, maybe, just maybe it would be a wise thing to do.
      Why the Chrome developers still haven’t done it is truly baffling.

      Reply
  11. Keywood Avatar
    Keywood

    Everyone hates pull-to-refresh. When will this finally go through the thick heads of the Chrome developers? When enough people switch to Firefox?

    Pull-to-refresh might seem useful at the first glance, but in practice, the damage done by it outweighs any use.

    Thousands of people have stated in various online forums that they do not want a screen-sized refresh button.

    The act of pulling down has exactly one purpose: scrolling up. With pull-to-refresh, the results of pulling down becomes ambiguous. Avoiding pull-to-refresh takes a toll on the mental energy.

    Refreshing is rarely ever necessary in a web browser, where as scrolling up is done all the time. This should be obvious. In the rare occasions when refreshing is actually necessary, it can be done in half a second using the refresh button in the submenu. Where is the need for this useless gesture?

    Refreshing is a potentially destructive action, since it leads to the loss of any unsaved input and the playback position of an online video.

    App developers choose to implement this nonsense mostly do it because “other apps do it too”, not because of its usefulness (which is non-existent). I love to see this design trend die out.

    Some crackhead probably thought “Twitter has done it, so we should too!” without taking half a second to question whether it is actually a wise idea.

    At this point I believe the Chrome developers refuse to get rid of pull-to-refresh to avoid admitting to failure. The failure to get rid of this nonsense much earlier. If the Chrome developers got rid of it after five years of complaints, it would be a severe embarrassment, so they are better off pretending that making this utter nonsense mandatory was the correct decision.

    [I hereby release this comment into the public domain.]

    Reply

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