Along similar lines, when using the keyboard to navigate through the icons on the NTP, the focus indication of the apps icon is really poor. It just makes the icon slightly darker, which is almost impossible to see. We should figure out a stronger focus indication here. 

The Mac NTP currently inherits UX design from the Google search homepage. This includes the focus indication. Unless we change the NTP design entirely, I think we should stay consistent with google.com

I still think this is a valid point, so maybe something to bring up with Google.com folks?

Similar to  bug 696242 , this UI is actually owned by OneGoogle, not by Chrome/NTP, so we should take it up with them.

That said, I do see a focus indication when tabbing through the apps: The title gets underlined. But it's not very noticeable.

Navigating with arrow keys doesn't seem to be possible at all (on Windows, not sure if that makes a difference).

hwi@, what should we do here?

treib@ - is the one google bar part of Chrome/NTP now, or no? If no, filing a separate bug to the team would be the next step. Let me know, I can file. 

+maxwalker for his any ongoing work on NTP (please update the design owner changes, maxwalker). 

No, Chrome/NTP doesn't own the code for this. However, note that mid-term we will switch to a newer version of the bar (from "Vasquette" to "Material") which has better focus indication. That should happen around M63, so depending on the urgency here, the solution might be "just wait" :)

The newer version seems to address the issue with more visible indicators. Waiting for the new update on NTP SGTM. Thanks!

Assigning to treib as desktop NTP owner to track this. Reducing priority based on comments #13 and #14.

Friendly ping -- any progress here? 

This will be fixed once we switch to the local NTP (see bug 696071), which is currently aimed at M64.

Actually, this seems to have been fixed in the meantime even on the current NTP: Focus is now indicated by underlining the active item. Is that good enough?

Also reproducible on Google Chrome 64.0.3251.0 (Official Build) canary (64-bit) (cohort: 64-Bit) on Windows 10 Enterprise Version 1607 Build 14393.1770

The text is now underlined but focus is not clearly indicated on the apps and notification icons. The change in color is very slight. As for the profile image, that shows no focus indication at all. 

Thanks for re-testing! Then I'll leave this open until the local NTP launches (hopefully M64).

If you want to try it out now: Go to chrome-search://local-ntp/local-ntp.html. It uses the newer "Material" version of the OGB which has better focus indication for apps/notifications and also adds it for profile.

Closing this one since it's fixed on the local NTP (chrome-search://local-ntp/local-ntp.html) and we're not planning to do anything about the remote NTP. (It's hard to change there since the OGB UI isn't owned by Chrome.)