There have been some aesthetic changes to what form elements look like as of Chrome 83. Anything with gradient colorization is gone (notably the extra-shiny <meter> stuff). The consistency across the board is nice, particularly between inputs and textareas. Not a big fan of the new <select> styling, but I hear a lot of accessibility research went into this, so it’s hard to complain there — plus you can always change it.

Hakim has a nice comparison tweet:

Chrome’s new default form styles are out 👀 pic.twitter.com/Pr6qi1LpPn

— Hakim El Hattab (@hakimel) May 26, 2020

This is not accompanied by new standardized ways to change the look of form elements with CSS, although browsers are well aware of that and seem to draw nearer and nearer all the time. I believe this was a step along that path.

I also see there is a new <input type="time"> as well. The old version looked like this and offered no UI controls:

Now we get this beast with controls:

Reddit notes that it uses the same pseudo element that date pickers use, so if you want it gone, you can scope it to these types of inputs (or not) and remove it.

input[type="time"]::-webkit-calendar-picker-indicator {
  display: none;
}

I’d call it an improvement (I like UI controls for things), but it does continue to highlight the need to be able to style these things, particularly if the goal is to have people actually use them and not (poorly) rebuild them.