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Google Chrome hides the "https://" and "www." in web addresses until you click twice in the address field. If you'd rather see the full URL, you can do it in two clicks. You'll see "https://www.howtogeek.com" instead of "howtogeek.com".

Just right-click in Chrome's address bar select "Always show full URLs" to make Chrome show full URLs.

Enabling "Always show full URLs" in Chrome

Chrome will now always show the full URL of every web address you open.

To disable this feature, right-click in the address bar again and uncheck it.

Chrome showing full URLs

No Longer Necessary: The Hidden Flag

In Chrome 83, you had to enable this hidden flag first. This is no longer necessary, but we're leaving this section here for historical reasons---or in case this changes in the future.

This option requires enabling a hidden flag in Google Chrome. To find it, copy-paste the following text into Chrome's address bar and press Enter:

chrome://flags/#omnibox-context-menu-show-full-urls

To the right of "Context menu show full URLs" on the Flags page, click the box and select "Enabled."

The "Context menu show full URLs" flag in Chrome

Click "Relaunch Chrome" to restart the browser. Be sure to save any data on web pages before clicking this button---Chrome will reopen all your tabs, but you may lose information that you typed in forms on web pages, for example.

Relaunching Chrome after enabling a flag

As usual with Chrome flags, this hidden flag is experimental and could be removed or change at any time in the future.

We expect that Google will one day remove the flag and leave the "Always show full URLs" option in the address bar for everyone. Anyone would then be able to toggle full web addresses in a few clicks without messing with flags.

Google did! You don't have to mess with flags to change this option.