Remember when you could hit backspace and go back one page in your history? Those were the days!
If you’re a Chrome 52 user, you might have noticed that no longer works. Instead, it’ll show this screen.
This was discussed at length and the consensus was: it’s mad to have such functionality, it does more harm than good, let’s rethink it. And so, the backspace functionality has been removed.
But to ease our pain, Chrome 52 introduced a new material design, so all is good, right?
Well, if like me, you miss the old backspace functionality, you can get it back!
Quickest fix: a Chrome extension#
You can get the back to back Chrome extension that fixes this for you. Google also publishes its own Go Back With Backspace extension, which is kept up-to-date (Manifest V3) and re-enables backspace as a back button, except when you’re typing in a text field.
But come on, using an extension for this feels wrong, no?
Add CLI argument to restore backspace#
There used to be a Chrome flag for this: starting Chrome with --enable-blink-features=BackspaceDefaultHandler --test-type restored the old backspace functionality.
That no longer works. The flag was removed from Chromium not long after this was written, so the only way to get the old behaviour back today is one of the extensions above. (Or just train your fingers to use Alt + ←.)
Because apparently we’re the 0.04% of users that want this feature .