How to hide the address bar in Chrome

To hide the address bar, launch Chrome from the terminal in application mode, passing the URL with the --app flag. There is no easy way to do it from within an open instance of Chrome.

App mode opens the page in a minimal window: no tabs, no toolbar, no address bar. Just the page content, with the window controls.

I use this when I record screencasts or take screenshots of a web app. The browser chrome disappears and what you capture looks like a native application. It’s also handy for dashboards you keep open on a second monitor all day.

macOS

On macOS the Chrome binary lives inside the application bundle, so the command is long:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --app=https://flaviocopes.com

Notice the backslashes. The path contains spaces, and each backslash escapes the space that follows it. If you forget them, the shell splits the path into pieces and you get a “no such file or directory” error. Escaping them (or wrapping the whole path in quotes) fixes it.

Windows

Chrome.exe --app=https://flaviocopes.com

(prepend Chrome.exe with the Chrome folder, which varies by Windows version - see here)

Linux

google-chrome --app=https://flaviocopes.com

A few things to know

Pass the full URL, including the https:// part.

The command opens a new window even if Chrome is already running, so you don’t need to quit your existing session. Your open tabs stay where they are.

The app window is still a real Chrome window. Keyboard shortcuts work, and you can open the DevTools if you need them. There’s just no visible UI around the page.

If you want to keep using a site this way, you can turn the command into a small shell script or an alias, so you don’t have to retype the whole path every time. I keep one for the web apps I use daily.