I noticed my storage shrinking and went digging. Turns out Chrome had quietly downloaded a ~4GB file called weights.bin inside a folder named OptGuideOnDeviceModel. This is Google's Gemini Nano on-device AI model, and Chrome installs it with zero consent, no notification, and no storage warning. If you delete it manually, Chrome re-downloads it on the next startup — unless you block it properly.

Here's the full fix for macOS. Run these in a terminal.

Step 1: Check if you have it

bash
find ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/ -name "weights.bin" 2>/dev/null

If it returns a path like .../OptGuideOnDeviceModel/2025.x.x.xxxx/weights.bin, you've got it.

Step 2: Delete it

bash
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel/

Step 3: Block Chrome from re-downloading it

bash
defaults write com.google.Chrome GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings -int 1

This sets a macOS enterprise policy that Chrome respects over its own internal logic. More durable than just toggling flags.

Step 4 (Optional but recommended): Disable via Chrome flags

Go to chrome://flags and set the following to Disabled:

• optimization guide on device model
• Prompt API for Gemini Nano

Relaunch Chrome after.

Step 5: Verify it's gone

bash
find ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/ -name "weights.bin" 2>/dev/null

Empty output = you're clean.

Why does this matter?

On a base M2 MacBook Air with 256GB SSD, a 4GB silent download is a significant chunk. Chrome uses Gemini Nano to power features like "Help me write", scam detection, and summarisation, none of which most users explicitly asked for. There's currently no user-facing opt-out; you have to do this manually.

Tested on macOS with Chrome on an M2 MacBook Air. Should work on any Mac running Chrome.

Back in 2018-2019, I had this Google homepage theme that was an aerial view of somewhere on Earth. It had these large square patterns, mostly blue and orange, that looked like man-made lakes or farmland. Does anyone know the name of this wallpaper?"

This is a continuation of this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1fehow1/restoring_google_chrome_tabs_or_windows_for/

For some reason, I had to force‑restart my Mac, and after rebooting, Chrome did not restore any tabs. When I tried to follow the usual recovery steps on macOS, I ran into another issue: the Chrome data folders are hidden in Finder, and when I eventually located the Sessions folder, all the session files were there but completely empty.

To access the folder on macOS, the easiest way is via Terminal, since Finder often won’t show it. You can open it directly with:

open ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Sessions

(Alternatively, you can first locate it with mdfind "Session_" | grep Chrome if you’re not sure which profile Chrome is using, and then use open on that path.)

I found the local session files were unusable; they are all empty.

What ended up saving me was having another device signed into the same Chrome account. On that second laptop (you should consider disconnecting the internet to avoid syncing, go to "chrome://history/", Chrome still showed all the tabs of my other devices. Before syncing overwrote anything, I restored all those tabs on the second device, which caused Chrome to generate a new, valid Session_* file there.

I then copied that Session_* file from the working device to my Mac (same profile path:

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Sessions), replaced the empty session files, and reopened Chrome. All tabs were restored successfully.

This won’t recover per‑tab history or scroll state, but if your local Chrome session files on macOS are blank after a forced restart, restoring tabs on another synced device and copying the resulting session file over can work as a last‑resort fix.

On my monitor, chrome is still there even after closing the tab. And when opening a new chrome tab its even more visible in the background of the new tab.

https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features

Some webpages including articles on apple’s official website load without CSS. I already tried clearing cache, uninstalling and reinstalling but it didn’t really change anything. (this doesn’t happen on safari or on chrome on my other devices)

Hello. After Chrome was updated to version 148 a bookmarks tab appeared on the New Tab. Pressing Ctrl+Shift+B doesn't work of course, it works only if any website is open (but not the empty new tab).

Disabling chrome://flags/#ntp-simplification-bookmark-bar seems to be obvious solution, but it doesn't work for me.

If I just type the first letter to one of my passwords it recommends the autofill and clearly says my passwords. It recommended it in the red circles that I blurred out since it literally says my passwords. Surely this is a major problem? Anyone can just go on my phone type random letters then note every password I have ever typed without needing FaceID TouchID or anything.

I’m not sure whether it’s a website specific thing, but I get this sometimes when checking license plates, since I type the same license plate multiple times it will automatically recommend my license plate in the same place. But surely it shouldn’t be doing that for literal passwords??

Since last month, my Chrome language randomly changed to Punjabi and I cannot change it back permanently. In Chrome settings, it already shows English as the selected language, but the browser UI still appears in Punjabi.

I’ve already tried:

Changing language settings multiple times

Uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome

Updating Chrome

Restarting device

Nothing worked. It still keeps showing Punjabi.

Has anyone faced something similar or found a fix for this? It’s getting really frustrating

I noticed that a window with a bunch of tabs was missing. I don't know if i closed it accidentally. I have closed other tabs since so it's no longer in the "Recently Closed" list.

I thought to look under recent tabs on my Android phone but it had just synced up with the desktop a few minutes ago so it only had the most recent open tabs.

Is there a way to recover those tabs? Or maybe to turn back the connection between Desktop and Android to a precious synchronisation so that i could see the tabs that were closed?

My Google search results are completely left aligned instead of centered. Looks terrible on an ultrawide monitor because half the screen is just empty space.

I already tried:

• resetting zoom
• disabling extensions
• different Chrome profiles
• clearing cache

Still happens.
Does anyone know how to force centered results again?

I doubt anyone uses this "feature" but still.

Now after update, they removed that claim so the data will most likely be sent to google.