How to disable Google Chrome ‘New Tab’

Google New Tab

This is what I saw when I opened my Chrome browser in the morning.

And I hate it!

[PS: Edited on 5 Mar. This method does not work anymore after the latest Chrome update. You can try my method to avoid this page. Go to ‘Setting’, ‘On startup’ add ‘chrome://apps/’ to start your Chrome with Apps page. However, you can’t avoid the above page when you click ‘new tab’.]

I always set my ‘New Tab’ page with Chrome Apps. Now it becomes this. A screen of thumbnails of my usual sites and a redundant Google Search bar in the middle.

I can’t even figure out which is which in my most-visited sites with the small and snapshot-less thumbnails. If I want to Google something, I can type directly in the address bar aka omnibar. Not open a new tab to search in the voice-enabled search engine.

Lastly, I dislike the extra ‘Apps’ link at my bookmark bar. Moreover, there is no way to remove it in the ‘Setting’.

And lucky there is a solution to it.

Thanks to the comments in Techcrunch.

Type in chrome://flags/ into the address bar and you will go to this page.