Samar Haddad / The Verge
I usually have at least half a dozen or more projects going at once: I can be writing or updating several short pieces, editing one or two others, getting ready for Apple or Google or some other company to announce their latest and greatest, or dealing with some other project. Each of these projects usually involves several tabs on my Chrome browser: one for the article itself, several for online sources that I need to read or link to, and perhaps also a document or spreadsheet that I’m sharing with my team. And that’s not even counting the tabs for my email accounts (work and personal), calendars (ditto), and other social networking.
Once upon a time, I would have had to create bookmarks for all those tabs if I wanted to keep them in any kind of order. But these days, tab grouping is what keeps me sane. If you also tend to collect tabs on your Chrome browser, here’s how you can use tab groups to keep things at least somewhat in check.
How to create a tab group
Choose one of the tabs that you want to include in a group — any will do — and right-click on it.
Select Add Tab to Group > New Group
Type in the name of the new group, choose a color, and hit Return.
Just right click on a tab, create a new group, and name it.
Click and drag any tabs you want in the group toward the new label; they will now be underlined with the new color, indicating they’re part of the group.
You can click and drag tabs out of the group as well.
Now, when you aren’t using those particular tabs, just click on the label, and all your tabs will collapse into the label, out of sight and out of mind. Once you need to use them again, just click on the label again.
Any tabs you’re not using can now be hidden under a label, making your browser a lot neater.
Manage your tab groups
There are several ways you can manage the tab group by right-clicking on the label and selecting features on the drop-down menu:
Select New Tab in Group to create a new, unused tab.
Select Ungroup to remove the group label but keep the tabs
Select Close Group to remove the label and close all the tabs in the group
Select Move Group to New Window to — well, you know.
Reopen your tab group
If you’ve recently closed a tab group — so that all your tabs are no longer active — and then regretted it, you can find the tabs in the group and restore them.
Click on the Search Tabs icon (it’s the small downward-facing arrow in the upper right corner of the browser).
Scroll down to Recently Closed.
Look for small colored dots underneath the names of the tabs — they will be the same color as the label, and next to them will be the name of the label you assigned. While you won’t be able to open all the tabs at once, if you click on them, they will reopen one at a time as part of their group.
The small colored dots indicate that the tabs were part of a group; the name of the group is next to the dot.
Save your tab group
If you’ve got a tab group that you’ll be using over the course of days — or longer — you will logically want to save that group in the same way that you can say, say, a bookmark. Google hasn’t added that feature to its standard right-click menu yet (at least, as of Official Build 106.0.5249.91). But the feature is available — although it is a bit quirky. No, let’s be clear — it’s very quirky. But you might find it useful.
Open a new tab in your Chrome browser and type chrome://flags in the search field.
Type tab groups in the search field on top.
Next to Tab Groups Save, click on the drop-down menu (where it says Default) and select Enabled.
You can create a Tab Groups Save toggle; however, its usefulness is limited.
Click on Relaunch.
After your browser relaunches, right-click on your tab group label. You’ll now see a toggle called Save Group. Click on the toggle to save your group.
The tab group drop-down menu will now have a toggle called Save Group.
But how do you find your saved group after you’ve closed your browser? In your browser’s history. It’s not obvious, but it is there.
Click on the three dots in the upper right corner and select History.
Look under Recently Closed for the number of tabs that were in your browser when it closed. If you can find it, click on that.
If you chose the right entry, you’ll see all the tabs that were in Chrome at that time, including the group label. Click on Restore Window, and you’ll get all the tabs, including the group (with its label).
When you’ve enable tab groups save, you can then go into your tab history and find a closed group.
You can also hover over the label and just restore one of the tabs in it, and it will restore along with the group label. But, inconveniently, you can’t click on the label and just restore the group. And if the group doesn’t appear under Recently Closed, you’re out of luck.