Google Chrome could load the desktop versions of sites by default on large Android tablets

One of the biggest challenges of using a large screen device, including Android tablets, is viewing webpages in an optimised layout. Because the tablet is recognised as a mobile device, the site doesn’t load up the full ‘desktop version’ that would fill up the screen instead of the more minimal mobile version.

Google Chrome, one of the most widely used browsers on mobile devices, is looking to solve this issue, according to a report by XDA. It appears that Google’s browser will now check your device’s display size and then request the desktop version of a site by default, thereby eliminating the need to select the option manually.

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The upcoming change was spotted by XDA on the open-source Chromium browser’s Gerrit (a site where new changes being worked on are listed and discussed as modifications are made to the code). The change proposes to set up an “experiment for requesting the desktop site for tablets” and devices will need to have a particular (but unspecified) screen size or DPI (dots per inch) in order to have the feature work on their devices.

On Apple’s iPads, the built-in Safari browser contains an option in the Settings app, that allows users to ask the browser to unconditionally load the desktop versions of sites. This is another alternative that Google could look into for users who use their tablets to browse the web and prefer to load the desktop version of a site thanks to the larger display.

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As with many in-development features, this seems like a great improvement to those with larger screens who are currently served with tiny sites optimised for mobile screens. However, just like many other in-development features, it could also get dropped or abandoned if it doesn’t work reliably or a better solution comes up, and we will only know once it shows up in the Chrome browser’s Canary or Beta channels.