Hidden “Tab Groups” feature on Chrome and here’s how to get it!.
With so many tabs clogging up my space, I’ve always wanted to split them right inside Chrome without using any extension like OneTab. Of course, I can still keep from accidentally closing the tab by pinning the tab, but combining them together is another level of performance improvement. It turns out there is a hidden setting inside Chrome that allows you to do just that. It not only allows you to combine tabs into a group, but also highlights them with color for further differentiation. Let’s dive into this.
Read : Free Up Space on Your Chromebook
Chrome flags
If you’re messing with Chrome, you already know this, but if you don’t, Chrome Flags are experimental features that Google is trying out all of its features that are still in development and have not yet been released to the consumer build. The flag option is not open, but you can easily access it by clicking here. We recently reviewed the best flags that you can read here.
I’ve tried this on Chome version 78.0.3904.108 , so you can update yours if the options don’t show up when you follow the instructions.
Just open the Flags tab by typing chrome : // flags in the Chrome address bar and go to the Flags tab. You will see a warning: all of these features are still in the experimental stage, so they are not completely stable.
You will then be shown the most popular checkbox options. Just scroll down to Tab Groups and enable this option. You will be prompted to restart Chrome so that you can make the necessary changes.
After restarting and opening the tabs you want, just right click to open Tab Options. You will notice a new Group option. Select the Add to new group option.
Once you select Add to New Group, you will see a New Tab appear to the left of the selected tab. This is the Group tab, which separates one group from another.
Alternatively, you can name the group of your choice, but also assign a specific color to a specific group so that you can more easily notice the difference.
This is how everything looks organized. You can easily merge tabs together. In addition to making the space for the tabs cleaner, it also speeds up your work, trust me when I say that. I have grouped all the tabs by work, music, video and trash. This led me to easily figure out which tabs I should leave and which are not so important.
OneTab vs. Chrome Tab Groups
We talked about OneTab as a great utility tool, but it works a little differently than the Chrome Tab Group. OneTab essentially collapses all open tabs and groups them all together in a list, whereas tab groups group all the tabs in a specific group together. Whereas a tab group allows you to position tabs horizontally together and optionally highlight each group with a separator tab. OneTab allows you to name groups in the form of a list.
Another important feature that makes the two completely alien to each other is OneTab’s ability to save on tabbed memory consumption, which the tab group lacks. Therefore, if you are choosing between these two, I would suggest OneTab because it gives you more options to use. You can also use them together, but remember that if you collapse grouped tabs with OneTab, it will not recognize the segregator tab.
Closing words
Using Chrome can get really tricky if you don’t have control over it. Personally, I often save up tabs. Users usually ignore these features, which can really be useful and effective in terms of both saving time and cleaning up their workspace. You can experiment with this, but I am very excited about the final version of this feature in a custom build. Yes, there are a few limitations such as the limited color palette, the lack of a separate group tab that allows me to see all groups together. But even in beta, I really should give it a try.
I am very intrigued by the features of Chrome’s flags and I promise there are many more articles to come. Be in touch!
Hidden “Tab Groups” feature on Chrome and here’s how to get it!