Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR Browsers like Chrome regularly employ tactics to reduce user turnover, including setting the browser as your default.
Chrome Canary has recently started testing a new onboarding screen that not only offers to set your default browser, but also pins Chrome to the taskbar.
Some battles just never end. Here in 2026, the cola wars may have lost a lot steam, but that rivalry continues. The war on drugs still chugs along, despite its utter senselessness. And while it’s much less heated these days than it was twenty-some years ago, the browser wars are still being fought. This week we’re checking out one of Google’s latest Chrome Canary releases, where the browser is trying out a new trick to give it a little edge.
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While the big thing in browsers right now is AI integration, with Chrome’s Gemini sidebar or Copilot in Microsoft Edge, the browser wars aren’t just about attracting new users with big feature launches. That’s absolutely valuable, but the companies behind browsers are just as interested (if not more so) in user retention. You build up your user base through familiarity, and that’s exactly why so many browsers are as aggressive as they are with encouraging you to set them as your system default.
Chrome already does just that (and has for the better part of forever), but Chrome developers are now testing a new onboarding screen that’s even more hawkish than before (via WindowsReport).
So far, when installing Chrome and running it for the first time, users have been presented with a screen like this:
Stephen Schenck / Android Authority
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