For clarity, we’re not talking about changing your new tab page background image. Or about otherwise displaying Google photos in a full-screen fashion on the new tab page. In Google Photos, Memories is a feature that pools images from a date, date range, or of a subject. Those are shown in custom, album-style image galleries that you can navigate. And those galleries are in the works to be added in their own dedicated card-based UI on the new tab page. Google may or may not allow background cycling later on. But that’s not what this feature is. Regardless, that feature is now available in the Stable Channel for some. But only if you know where to look and are willing to risk potential performance degradation to enable it. And, of course, that’s exactly what this guide is here to examine. So, without further ado, let’s dig in.
This requires a flag setting, for now
Now, for the time being, this isn’t a full-fledged or fully-rolled-out feature. So setting your Chrome new tab page to display Google Photos memories requires an extra step. Namely, you’ll need to dive into Chrome’s experimental settings and turn the feature on. That also means that there’s a chance that using this feature will negatively impact your browser performance. Or cause other, unexpected problems. And, of course, that also means that not everybody will necessarily be able to use this feature just yet. It didn’t, for example, work on some of our Chromebooks, used for this first part of the guide’s sample images. Additionally, this won’t work on mobile just yet — or, in some cases, additional flags may be needed. Although it could potentially be added under the same flag — or a different one — later on. For now, you’ll need to follow these steps on a desktop platform. Whether that’s Chrome OS, Windows, Mac, or somewhere else.
Once enabled, here’s how to set Google Photos to your Chrome new tab page
Prior to continuing, it’s worth noting that we’ve used one of Google’s alternative Photos Memories — labeled “fake memories 4” on the Chrome Flags page on Windows — for our sample images below. So what’s seen below isn’t what you’ll see for your Memories cards. You’ll see your own photos. Organized neatly just as the Google Photos app and web UI organizes them. Regardless, the process for seeing those photos in action on the new tab page will be similar enough to make no difference.
