Chrome just made your browsing history easier to understand

It’s easy to check your Google Chrome history and scratch your head trying to remember why certain sites are on there. That can be because you were directed to the site via an app rather than while browsing on Chrome. To address this, Google just tweaked Chrome history to add an indication if a site was visited via a third-party app.

Artem Russakovskii highlighted the subtle update in a post on X. The post states, “Google Chrome history now tells you if a site was visited via a third-party app, like Google App or Google News. Neat.” It goes on to credit Hamzah Malik for spotting the change.

The post is accompanied by a screenshot of Google Chrome history on mobile, which supports the assertion. Three of the entries show one of the apps the poster mentioned next to the URL of the site visited via those apps.

It’s such a small update that many people won’t notice for a while or ever, but it’s the type of common-sense addition that we like to see. More and more apps prefer users stay within them even when enjoying external experiences, like a news article, while the history for the page gets recorded in Chrome. If you then open up Chrome, you’d be scratching your head (especially on shared devices), and this change helps demystify the situation a bit.