In recent updates to the Google Chrome app for Android, Google introduced a feature called “Tab Groups.” When you open a link in a new tab, Chrome automatically clusters that new tab together with your current tab in a single folder at the bottom of the screen. While Google intended this to help users organize their browsing sessions, many people find the grid layout confusing and prefer the classic, standalone tab carousel.
Unfortunately, Google has repeatedly changed the way Tab Groups function, making them difficult to disable. If you want to force Chrome to treat every new tab as a completely independent window without automatically grouping them, you have to dig into the browser’s hidden experimental settings.
How to Turn Off Tab Grouping in Chrome for Android
Because there is no standard settings toggle for this behavior, you must modify Chrome’s internal flags.
- Open the Google Chrome app on your Android smartphone.
- Tap the address bar at the top of the screen, type
chrome://flags, and hit Enter. - In the search box at the very top of the Experiments page, type Tab Groups.
- Look for a flag named exactly Tab Groups (or Tab Grid Layout, depending on your exact version of Chrome).
- Tap the drop-down menu beneath the flag (it will likely say “Default”) and select Disabled.
- A blue Relaunch button will appear at the bottom of your screen. Tap it to restart the browser.
Additional Flags to Check
Because Google is aggressive about forcing Tab Groups, disabling a single flag sometimes isn’t enough on newer builds of Chrome. If tabs are still grouping after following the steps above, repeat the process and disable the following flags as well:
- Tab Groups UI Improvements (Set to Disabled)
- Start surface (Set to Disabled to prevent the grid layout from appearing on startup)
Once you restart Chrome again, whenever you long-press a link and select “Open in new tab,” the link will spawn a completely separate tab instead of burying itself in a group folder.