This Chrome plugin brings Google's old icons back to your tabs

If you’re not a fan of Google’s new icons, we have some good news. A new Chrome extension — spotted by Gizmodo, among others — lets you restore the tab icons for Gmail, Calendar, Meet and other Google services to their former glory. You can thank product designer Claudio Postinghel for the plugin.

Google introduced its new slate of icons in October when it rebranded GSuite to Google Workspace. And not since the company killed off its adorable blob emoji has one of its design decisions generated so much discussion. It’s fair to say most people aren’t a fan of the new icons. Not only do they look generic, replacing designs that were iconic, they also make Google’s services less accessible since it can be hard to distinguish between the icons when they’re smooshed into small tabs.

The plugin won’t help you bring back Google’s old icons on mobile, but if you own an Android phone, you can use a third-party launcher and icon set to change how they look. Oh, and if you don’t use Chrome, Postinghel says he’s working on a Firefox version of the extension.