How to Enable or Disable Chrome’s Bookmark Bar

You can enable or disable Chrome’s bookmark bar directly within the browser’s settings to manage your screen space and quick access to favorite websites.

The Chrome bookmark bar, a row below the address bar, shows saved links for easy access. Enabling the Chrome bookmark bar gives one-click access to frequently used websites. Disabling the Chrome bookmark bar creates a cleaner browsing screen with more vertical space, a verifiable benefit for users.

Hiding Chrome's bookmark bar creates more screen space for users with small monitors or those desiring a simple look. Keeping the bookmark bar visible benefits users who visit over 12 favorite websites daily, as visible bookmarks speed up their work.

Enable/Disable the bookmark bar in Chrome

You can turn the bookmark bar on or off in Chrome using a keyboard shortcut or the browser’s settings. This bar helps you quickly access your favorite websites right from the Chrome toolbar.

If you prefer to use the menu, you can also manage this in the settings. Google updates the Chrome interface often. If you can’t find the setting, use the “Search settings” bar at the top of the Settings page to locate it quickly.

You can also hide the bookmark bar to save vertical screen space. If you do this, you can still manage your sites by using the Chrome Side Panel.

Here is how to change the setting manually:

1. Open the Google Chrome browser.
2. Click the three vertical dots in the top right corner.
3. Select Settings.
4. Click Appearance on the left menu.

Find the “Show bookmark bar” option and toggle it to your preference.

Close the settings tab when you are finished.

Advanced/Enterprise: Enable/Disable the bookmark bar using the Registry

If you’re an IT admin, you can control the Chrome bookmark bar for many computers at once by changing a setting in the Windows Registry Editor. This is a more advanced way to manage Chrome settings across an organization.

Open the Windows Registry Editor and navigate to this path:

Computer\🗝️HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chromecopy

Before you make any changes, it’s a good idea to back up your registry or create a System Restore point as a precaution.

If you don’t see the Google or Chrome folders, right-click the Policies folder and select ‘New’ > ‘Key’ to create them. Then, right-click inside the Chrome folder, select ‘New’ > ‘DWORD (32-bit) Value’ (a type of registry entry), and name it BookmarkBarEnabled.

The Bookmark Bar value in Google Chrome controls the bookmark bar's visibility. Setting the Bookmark Bar value to 0 hides the bookmark bar. Setting the Bookmark Bar value to 1 shows the bookmark bar.

You might need to restart your computer for these changes to apply.

Reference: Chrome Enterprise Policy

Customizing your bookmark bar helps you browse faster. Whether you use the keyboard shortcut or the settings menu, you can adjust your view to fit your needs.