Here’s how to use it – Daily Report

Google has been testing a new sidebar in Chrome that makes web search easier, and it’s starting to roll out more widely with the release of Chrome 108. Here’s how it works and how to use it.

The new side search has been in the development and testing stages for over a year, but it’s unrelated to the bookmarks and reading list sidebar that rolled out in 2021. When you do a web search, then you click a link, a small icon for your search engine will appear on the right side of the address bar. If you click the button, the search results will appear again, but this time in a panel on the right side of the screen.

You can click a different link in the side panel to replace the current page. It’s especially useful for times when you need to click through multiple search results, saving you the frustration of navigating back and forth over and over again.

However, there are some catches at this point. Not supported by all search engines: It works (as you’d expect) with Google, but not when options like DuckDuckGo are set as the default search. Work is underway to get other search providers to have the same integration, but not all popular search engines are supported yet.

The panel also seems to appear only when you are using your default search engine. For example, if you have Bing as your default engine and you search using Google, the panel will not appear.

Finally, the feature is not yet rolled out to everyone, but it can be manually enabled using feature flags. If you don’t see the search button in your address bar, go to chrome://flags/#side-search and chrome://flags/#side-search-dse-support (paste them into your address bar) and set both dropdowns to “Enabled”. After completely exiting Chrome and opening it again, the button should appear.