I think this started happening with the last few Chrome upgrades, but I'm not positive. The problem is that I disabled the prediction service in the 'Privacy and security' section because I don't care for the "help" it provides, but the darn thing keeps on offering various predictions in a drop down menu under the address bar. How do I get the prediction service to take a permanent hike?
After diabling it, suggestions are now based on your bookmarks and visited websites (history). This is by design But it is not searching the web anymore after this option has been disabled.
Good to know, mood. TY. I wouldn't mind stopping the history and bookmark portion of the prediction service. I don't like it for the same reasons I didn't like it when I thought it was searching the web. So, "this is by design" essentially means it can't be disabled, correct?
Yes, correct. As long as you have bookmarks and have visited websites, entries in the drop down menu can be expected. But it can be limited to a minimum if the history is regularily cleaned. As soon as you begin to visit websites, the drop down menu will continue to grow. There is a flag chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-max-autocomplete-matches "Changes the maximum number af autocomplete matches displayed in the Omnibox UI." but sadly it cannot be set to 0
TY, mood. I checked out that flags setting, and it appears to be primarily for increasing the default number of matches displayed. Right now the default on my machines looks to be six. The setting you identified can decrease that to four, but can increase it to twelve. There is a 'disabled' setting, but I assume that is to disable the ability to increase or decrease the displayed matches. I'll try it though. Thanks again for the info.
