Google has been working on the tabs grouping feature for quite a while now. In-fact, reports came back in November last year stating Google will add support for tab groups. The feature now appears to be getting more close to release as more abilities are being added for Tab Groups in Chrome’s Canary channel.
If you’re not aware, Tab groups is the feature that allows users to add similar tabs to groups for quicker access and identification. As of now, the feature can be enabled by tweaking a setting on Chrome flags.
Chrome Tab Grouping on Windows and macOS
- To enable tab grouping, open Google Chrome and enter chrome://flags in your address bar. On the search box that appears now, search Tab Groups and choose Enabled in the drop-down list. You can also paste the following command into your address bar to directly access Tab Groups.
chrome://flags/#tab-groups
- After enabling, restart the browser and you will get “Add to a new group” option when you right-click a tab on Chrome. I would recommend you to add tabs of the same topic or website into a group so that you can easily find them. Take a look at the below image taken from the Google Chrome 76 stable version to know how it looks.
- Google Chrome Canary provides more features like the ability to name the groups and set colors you like from the colors provided in the drop-down list as you can see in the below image.
While the feature looks more polished and complete on the Chrome Canary, there is no drag and drop support which is quite disappointing as it would allow people to easily move a group of tabs out into a new window. I hope Google adds drag and drop support before making the feature public.
Chrome Tab Grouping on Android
Tab grouping feature is also present on the Android counterpart of Google Chrome. The procedure to enable tab groups on Android is similar to what you do on the Windows and macOS platform. Open chrome://flags and type in Tab Groups to enable the feature. After a restart of browser, you will get access to Tab Groups feature.
Upon enabling it, you will be able to create different sets of groups just like the desktop version. However, there is no option to assign group names or set individual colors to each group.
Favicons of the web pages will be horizontally aligned on the bottom of the browser so that you can easily identify the web page without switching to it. To add a new tab to an existing tab group, switch to the tab group you need to add more tabs to and tap on the + icon that appears to the right of the favicon preview.
Tab groups will also help you efficiently manage and organize the open tabs and will be helpful to declutter the number of open tabs as closing many tabs is just a swipe away.
So, what do you think of the tab grouping feature? Will you consider using it to get better clarity on the tabs you have opened? Let us know in the comments section below.
