Pull-to-refresh in mobile web browsers is useless and annoying.

In mid-2019, the #disable-pull-to-refresh-effect option was removed from chrome://flags on Chrome for Android (version 76) for no apparent reason. The top answer in the Google product forum was to beg for this option to be reinstated through the browser's feedback form ( http://web.archive.org/web/... ). Needless to say, that has been futile.

Why is that a problem? The pull-to-refresh gesture not only is unnecessary due to the quickly accessible refresh button in the menu right next to the URL bar, but also causes unsolicited refreshes when quickly scrolling to the top of the page. This drains both the battery and the mobile data plan, in addition to adding an annoying delay.

I would like to use my web browser like a web browser, not a social media app. Besides, the Twitter web app has its own pull-to-refresh implementation in the notification feed.

Without pull-to-refresh, the user has the freedom to scroll up quickly without risking inadvertently reloading the page. If media was playing while an unwanted pull-to-refresh occurs, the user needs to seek for the last playing position, which could take upwards of a minute if the last position is unknown.

Imagine a desktop/laptop web browser reloading because you scroll against the top. Imagine you reach the top of the page but you have not stopped turning the scroll wheel yet, and then a white circle with a blue spinning refresh icon appears at the center top of the window and the page, and then you have to wait for the page to finish loading, and you also need to seek the last playing position of a video or audio track. Wouldn't that be ridiculous?

Any web browser vendor that enforces pull-to-refresh on its users basically begs users to seek an alternative.