Google Chrome’s “Tab Groups” feature is a fantastic way to organize dozens of open websites by categorizing them into color-coded, collapsible folders on your tab bar. However, by default, these groups are entirely temporary. If you accidentally close a tab group—or if you close the Chrome browser entirely—your carefully curated groups vanish forever, forcing you to rebuild them from scratch the next time you open the browser.
To fix this, Google is actively developing a feature that allows you to permanently save tab groups to your bookmarks bar. This means you can close a group to save memory, and then instantly restore it days later with a single click. Because this feature is still undergoing testing, it is hidden by default behind the Chrome flags menu. You can manually enable it right now.
How to Enable the Tab Groups Save Flag in Google Chrome
You must dive into Chrome’s hidden developer settings to activate the new saving mechanism.
- Open the Google Chrome browser.
- Click on the address bar at the top of the window, type
chrome://flags, and press Enter. - In the “Search flags” search box at the top of the screen, type Tab Groups Save and Sync.
- Look for the specific flag with that exact name. The description will state that it enables users to save and sync tab groups.
- Click the drop-down menu next to this entry (which is likely set to “Default”).
- Select Enabled from the drop-down menu.
- A prompt will appear at the bottom of the screen stating “Your changes will take effect the next time you relaunch Chrome.” Click the blue Relaunch button.
Once Chrome restarts, right-click on the colored header of any existing Tab Group. You will now see a new toggle switch labelled Save group. When you turn it on, a shortcut to that entire group will permanently appear on your Bookmarks Bar (just below the address bar). You can safely close the group, knowing you can restore all the tabs inside it instantly just by clicking its new icon.