Modern web browsing often involves opening dozens of tabs simultaneously. Before long, the tab bar becomes so cluttered that you can no longer read the titles of the pages, making it impossible to find the specific website you need. To solve this organizational nightmare, Google Chrome introduced Tab Groups, a feature that allows you to bundle related tabs together, color-code them, and collapse them to save space.
How to Create a New Tab Group
Creating a tab group takes only a few clicks and immediately cleans up your workspace.
- Open Google Chrome and open a few websites that are related to a specific project (e.g., travel research or work emails).
- Right-click on the top of one of the tabs you want to group.
- Select Add tab to new group from the context menu.
- A small menu will appear. Type a name for your group (e.g., “Holiday Planning”) and select a color from the palette.
- Press Enter or click anywhere outside the menu to save it.
You will now see a colored label sitting to the left of your tab. The tab itself will be underlined in the matching color.
How to Add and Remove Tabs from a Group
Once a group is created, managing the tabs inside it is incredibly intuitive.
- Adding tabs: To add an existing tab to your new group, simply click and drag the tab into the colored underline area. Alternatively, right-click any tab, select Add tab to group, and choose your existing group from the list.
- Opening new tabs inside the group: If you want to search for something new directly within the group, right-click the colored group label and select New tab in group.
- Removing tabs: To remove a tab, simply click and drag it completely outside the colored underline area, or right-click the tab and select Remove from group.
Collapsing Groups to Save Space
The greatest benefit of Tab Groups is the ability to hide the tabs when you are not actively using them.
Simply click once on the colored group name label. All the tabs inside that group will instantly slide underneath the label, disappearing from view and freeing up massive amounts of space on your tab bar. When you need to access those websites again, click the colored label a second time to expand the group back to its full size.
Saving Tab Groups for Later
If you have a set of websites you open every single day for work, you do not need to recreate the group every morning.
- Right-click on the colored group label.
- Toggle the switch next to Save group to the ON position.
A shortcut to this saved group will now appear on your Chrome bookmarks bar. Even if you close all the tabs or restart your computer, you can simply click the saved group icon on your bookmarks bar, and Chrome will instantly reopen the entire bundle of tabs exactly as you left them.