See the difference: Google Chrome changes the logo after eight years

Alvin Hu wrote on Twitter, “Some of you may have noticed a new icon in Chrome’s Canary update today. Yes! We’re refreshing Chrome’s brand icons for the first time in 8 years.”

Alvin Hu shared that “You might ask, ‘Why bother with sth. So subtle?’ We tailor the Chrome experience to each OS with features like native window occlusion on Windows, Day-One M1 support on macOS, widgets on iOS/Android and Material U on Android. We want our brand to be at the same level. Take care.”

“We simplified the main brand icon by removing shadows, refining proportions, and brightening colors, to align with Google’s more modern brand expression,” Hu explains.

Although these changes are subtle, the blue circle in the middle seems larger, making the colors in the logo even more vibrant. Hu wrote, “Fun fact: We also found that placing certain shades of green and red next to each other created an unpleasant color vibration, so we added a lot to the main icon to reduce it.” It also introduced the subtle gradient, which made the icon more accessible.”

According to ledgeInstead of incorporating shadows at the borders between each color, essentially “lifting them off the screen”, red, yellow and green are now just flat.

The main Chrome logo will not look the same on all systems. On ChromeOS, the logo will appear more colorful to complement other system icons, while on macOS, the logo will have a smaller shadow, making it appear as if it is “popping out” from the Dock. Meanwhile, the Windows 10 and 11 version have a more dramatic gradient so that it can fit in with the style of other Windows icons.

According to ledgeThe new icon can be seen if you use Chrome Canary (the developer version of Chrome), but it will start rolling out to everyone else in the next few months.

There are also some new icons for the beta and developer versions of the Chrome logo, with the most dramatic change being a blueprint-style icon for beta apps on iOS.

From 2008 until now, the Chrome logo is slowly becoming simpler. What started out as a shiny, three-dimensional symbol has been transformed into a 2D symbol.