Tab Groups – Chrome’s New Feature Keeps Your Tabs Organized Easily

The estimated reading time for this post is 4 minutes

Tech has divided our world into two types of people — tab minimalists, who only have a few windows open in their computer’s browser, and tab collectors, who have many windows open at all times. It’s safe to say that neither group understands the other, but everyone knows which group they fall into.

Tab collectors may accumulate dozens of open tabs over the course of days, weeks, or even months. But finding the tab they want later may present a challenge. They may need to sift through multiple tabs to find the one they’re looking for. Or they may give up and open a new tab resulting in multiple tabs open for the same website.

I must confess, I’m a tab collector. I keep many tabs open because, well, who knows when you might need instant access to a website?

Good news for us tab collectors, Google gets us. They seem to understand our tab hoarding collecting needs and are launching a feature in Chrome designed to help us organize our tabs quickly and easily. No more hunting through dozens of open tabs for the website you’re trying to find. No more opening a new tab and navigating to a website, only to realize you already had that site open in a different tab.

Google is rolling out an update to Chrome called Tab Groups that lets you organize your tabs into color-coded sections. With Tab Groups you can quickly organize your tabs and find open tabs more easily. And when you close and re-open Chrome, your Tab Groups will appear just where you left them.

Ideas for Using Tab Groups

You can use Tab Groups to organize your tabs into sections for social media, news, work projects, recipes, and research. Do you have a morning routine of websites you check daily? Create a Tab Group of websites you check first each day. Do you check COVID statistics on multiple websites? Make a COVID Tab Group to keep your favorite website resources readily available.

Do you check multiple email accounts? Create an email Tab Group to check your email accounts quickly.

Create Tab Groups based on the urgency of projects. You can add a Tab Group for ASAP, Today, This Week, or Whenever.

Shopping for a new home or a gift? Create a Shopping or House Hunting Tab Group to check for price changes and availability.

Also see => The Great Suspender: Tame Your Terrible Tabs!

How to Use Tab Groups in Google Chrome

Using Tab Groups in Chrome is easy and will let you quickly organize your open tabs. To begin to use Tab Groups, create a new Tab Group you can add tabs to.

Creating a New Tab Group

To create a new Tab Group, right-click on a tab. A menu will appear.

Choose Add to New Group to set up your first Tab Group. Name your Tab Group and choose a color. You can use emojis and symbols in addition to text for the name of a Tab Group.

A new colored tab will appear with the name of your new Tab Group and a colored line will appear under the tabs in that Tab Group.

Adding a Tab to a Tab Group

Right-click on any open tab and choose Add to Existing Group to add a tab to a Tab Group. A list of your Tab Groups will appear. Click on the Tab Group you want to add a tab to. That tab will move to the Tab Group you’ve chosen.

You can also drag and drop a tab into a Tab Group.

Removing a Tab from a Tab Group

There are three ways you can remove a tab from a Tab Group:

1. Close the tab
2. Drag and drop the tab out of the Tab Group
3. Right-click on the tab and choose Remove From Group

Availability

Google is rolling out this new feature in Chrome on Chrome OS, Windows, Mac, and Linux. To see whether Tab Groups is available to you, right-click on an open tab in Chrome. If you don’t see an option to Add to New Group, then you don’t have Tab Groups in Chrome yet.

If you don’t have it, check to see whether an update to Chrome is available. Click on the icon on the right side of the menu bar in Chrome to look for an available update.

How to Get Tab Groups If It Isn’t Available to You Yet

If you’ve checked and found you don’t have Tab Groups, even after you’ve updated Chrome you could be patient and wait for Tab Groups to be available for you.

Or…

You could enable Tab Groups by enabling the experimental version of this feature in Chrome. Using experimental Tab Groups takes a few extra steps and should be attempted only by those with an adventurous tech spirit.

If you’re willing to give experimental Tab Groups a go, type chrome://flags/ into the web address bar in Chrome, hit Enter, and search for Tab Groups. Then click the drop-down menu to the right of Tab Groups and choose Enabled.

Next, click the Refresh button in the lower right corner of your screen. Important => Be sure to save any work in progress in any open tabs before you refresh Chrome.

Chrome will refresh and Tab Groups should be available to you. Right-click on a tab to check to make sure that Tab Groups is enabled.

Your Thoughts

Are you a tab collector or a tab minimalist? How many tabs do you currently have open? Have you tried Tab Groups in Chrome to help keep your tabs organized?

Share your thoughts in the Comments section below!