While we won't be adding an option to disable inline autocompletion, we don't want it to be annoying.  Cases where Chrome aggressively suggests the wrong thing should be filed as bugs so we can try to fix them.

For example, in this case, Chrome shouldn't be autocompleting a multi-word search when you've typed one word or less, and you've only done the search once.  (This was  bug 79487 .)  If that's not what you're seeing, that's a clear regression.

We also rapidly downgrade the priority of previous searches, so that they should inline autocomplete only for a fairly short time.  That heuristic may need tuning.

In general, when you see something bad happen, file a bug with what input you supplied, what happened, what you expected to happen, and why Chrome's behavior was unexpected and unhelpful.  Include the information from chrome://omnibox/ with your input string and the "Show all details" and "Show results per provider" checkboxes checked.  (Don't worry about formatting the resulting dump, just copy-and-paste it.)  We can then see if there's something we could do to improve the heuristics for everyone.

IMO, better heuristics will never fix the issue. The issue is that, as a fast typer, I often end up hitting return to search before realizing that Chrome decided to append something to my search string. As a result, I have to move the cursor to the search box again to remove the extraneous part, and search again. Being seemingly completely unnecessary, this gets annoying really fast.

I would greatly prefer it if Chrome would merely show suggestions in the dropdown list, and not automatically decide when to override my search string.

I completely agree with that, putting the suggestions in the drop down.

Why was this closed it hasn't been resolved? Also it is not a duplicate, the issue you linked has nothing to do with this, plus was closed 5 years ago and this is still a problem. If Internet Explorer can have an option to disable autofill why can't chrome. And as me and countless others have expressed this is something that needs to be dealt with.
It causes way more frustration than it actually helps!

To try and restate comment 2: we won't be adding options to disable inline autocompletion either fully or partly, but when you see specific input cases which trigger bad autocompletions, you should file them with the details requested there, which will give us a chance to improve the heuristics for everyone.

The bug was duped against the most relevant bug on providing a way to fully disable inline autocompletion.  (Despite that bug's title, it is about inline autocompletion, not about disabling non-inline autocompletion.)  If that has "nothing to do with this", it's not clear what "option to turn this off" in comment 0 was requesting, or why comments 3/4 (which explicitly request disabling inline autocompletion entirely) are relevant.

Why can't you add an option? Clearly people want this, and have wanted this for a very long time! Other than that other issue being inside the Address Bar it isn't even close to what I am asking for, I don't care when it should autofill out the address bar, my issue is that it shouldn't do it at all, ever. I don't understand why you wont even take this into consideration, adding this option will not negatively affect anyone it will only make Chrome a better experience for the people who seriously hate this feature. Speaking from experience, this feature has never once helped me, it only causes me problems.

In short, the code and UX complexity of this is nontrivial because inline autocompletion is the central design feature around which all other omnibox decisions are based.  Adding this will, in fact, have negative effects, it's just that those aren't immediately apparent when you're not working on the feature.

You are always welcome to use products that make different design decisions if Chrome's don't serve you well.  That is why a non-monoculture in the browser space is a good thing.

I likely won't be responding further here, as I don't think I can be more useful.

@pkasting #8
Just to be perfectly clear here, you are saying that *inline* autocompletion is the central design feature of the address bar, and that it's not possible to have the same autocompleted queries appear beneath what the user types?

Neither Google.com nor Gmail work like this.

I didn't say "not possible".  I said "nontrivial".

Yes, nothing is absolutely impossible. But do I understand correctly that *inline* autocompletion is the central design feature, not just autccompletion?

There has been some confusion on similar issues, I've read comments such as "If we disable inline autocomplete the users would have to type the whole thing".

Thank you for your time.

Well, probably one would call "merging the search and address bars" an even more central feature of conceptual design, but behind that, yes, inline autocompletion has always been the core of the design, and the rest of the system built to achieve it first and all other goals secondarily.

Okay, thank you for your answer. Could it be disabled by an extension?

(sorry to keep replying here, but I don't think I should create a new issue for this :))

No.  There's no easy and obvious set of extension APIs we could design to muck with this kind of thing.  There are reasons the omnibox extension API is somewhat limited in what it can do.

Auto-completion is not necessary to searching, it should simply be an added feature that can be disabled or reconfigured. Why? Because browsers historically have only used auto-suggest (in a drop-down) which you could click to auto-complete. Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Edge all do this, and it's much more handy and not intrusive or mistake-prone like Chrome's forced auto-complete (which is only handy sometimes). Hitting Enter before you realize Chrome auto-completed also gives Google an inaccurate search record, and I'd be curious to know how often that happens.

Ironically, the Gmail search box puts the top suggestion in gray text in the box where you can just tap Tab or the right-arrow key to complete (it also has the drop-down suggestions). This is exactly how Chrome should function by default. I don't know why Google insists on one way in one search box but another way in another box which is confusing to users. The Gmail team figured out the best solution, maybe the Chrome team should upgrade.