Oliver Haslam on November 4, 2021, 1:11 am

Samsung Follows Apple And Moves Its Browser Address Bar To The Bottom

When Apple announced iOS 15 earlier this year and released it in September, one thing that people immediately either liked or hated was the decision to move Safari’s address bar to the bottom of the screen.

It turns out that Samsung was very much part of the former group, going so far as to copy the idea for itself.

Now, Samsung appears to have pushed a web browser update out to its Android phones that gives users the option to put the address bar at the bottom of the screen, just like Safari.

While Apple wasn’t the first one to make this move, Samsung’s timing is certainly suspect. Microsoft did something similar many years ago and other web browsers have dabbled with it, too.

Just like Apple, Samsung does give users the chance to move back to having the address bar at the top of the screen, giving them the flexibility to have it wherever they prefer. We’re still not sure which side we fall on, although there is no doubt that the bottom of the screen is more reachable than the top.

The real issue is years of muscle memory that needs to be overcome — but that’s surely something people will re-learn the more they use the new Safari and Samsung browser.

Apple made changes to Safari across the Mac and iPad as well, undoing many of them as developers and beta testers reported back on them.