No matter which browser you use, you can always count on the problem of having too many tabs open. The good news is that companies like Google know this and are proactively helping to solve this pain point. Enter “Tab Groups” and a better way of organizing and labeling your existing tabs. As the de facto leader in web browsing, Google did not wait for its competitors to come up with better ideas.
How do you enable Tab Groups in Chrome? Let us walk you through the quick and easy steps.
Turn on Tab Grouping
As the Tab Groups feature remains under development and is not yet available to the general public, you will need to enable a quick setting.
1. Open any new browser tab, and in the “Omnibox” or the search bar, type in chrome://flags.
2. A search bar will now appear at the top of the page. Type “Tab Groups” (not case sensitive) and Google will automatically pull up the result.
3. Using the drop-down box that is currently set to “Default,” select “Enable.”
4. When you select “Enable,” a large blue box will appear at the bottom of the browser that says “Relaunch Now.” Select it and do not worry – if you have any other open tabs, Chrome will reopen any existing tabs you had open.
Using Tab Groups
When Chrome relaunches, you will not notice anything different. The option for tab grouping is not necessarily “hidden” but isn’t front and center. Here’s how to get started.
Open up a few tabs in Chrome, preferably a few different tabs that are somewhat related to at least one another. Right-click on any tab and select the option labeled “Add to new group.” A colored circle immediately appears next to the tab. You can right-click on this colored circle and perform a number of tasks: choose another color, add another tab to the group, ungroup to separate recently grouped tabs or close the group altogether.
Separately, you can also give the tab group a name, which is another smart way to differentiate between work and personal tabs. Note that when you give the group a name, the colored circle disappears to make way for the name.
Do you want to add a new tab to an existing group? That’s especially easy. You can click on the tab group name/color and select “New tab in group” and add a new site. Separately, you can add a previously opened tab by right-clicking on it, selecting “Add to existing group” and choosing the appropriate group. There is one more way, as you can drag a tab over to an existing group until you see it adopt the color of the group you’d like it to become a part of.
Removing Tabs from Groups
If you are done with any tab being a part of any particular group, removing it is just one click away. Right-click on whichever tab you want to remove and select “Remove from group.” An alternative method is to drag the tab out of the browser so it opens a new browser window. This method also serves to remove that tab from the existing group.
But wait, we are not done with removing tabs from groups. There is one more way you need to know of. To dissolve a group entirely, you can click the colored circle or name and choose “Ungroup.” Selecting this option will then remove all tabs from the group, and the circle or icon will disappear entirely.
Close All Tabs in a Group
If you are done with all of the tabs in a group and no longer need the tabs open, you can also choose to close all of them. Click on the colored circle or name for the group you wish to close and select “Close Group.” Chrome will now close all of the tabs from the group. If you accidentally closed a tab you wish to reopen, you can always go back to “History” and find the closed tab.
Conclusion
While this new Tab Grouping feature is imperfect, it’s a far better solution than Chrome currently allows. There are dozens of reasons why this feature will be perfect for so many users including students and anyone who relies on a browser as part of their job. It is a fantastic way to get more organized, all without adding yet another extension to your browser that could gobble up more memory.
Have you tried Tab Groups in Chrome? We’d love to hear your thoughts on using it below.
Read Next:
- How to Add Dark Mode to Google Chrome
- How to Change the Default Font in Google Chrome
- How to Lock Google Chrome with Passwords
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David Joz
David is a freelance tech writer with over 15 years of experience in the tech industry. He loves all things Nintendo.
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