If you are a power user who constantly has 20 or 30 tabs open in Google Chrome at the same time, finding your most important websites can become a nightmare. When the tab bar gets crowded, the titles disappear, and you are left squinting at dozens of tiny icons.
If you have a few websites that you keep open all day long—such as your Gmail inbox, a Slack channel, or a Spotify playlist—you should use Chrome’s Pin feature. Pinning a tab shrinks it down, locks it in place, and prevents you from accidentally closing it.
How to Pin a Tab
Pinning is incredibly simple and takes less than a second.
- Open the website you want to pin in Google Chrome.
- Move your mouse up to the tab at the top of the screen.
- Right-click directly on the tab.
- From the drop-down menu that appears, select Pin.
Instantly, the tab will shrink down until only the website’s small logo (favicon) is visible. It will also immediately slide all the way to the far left side of your browser window.
The Benefits of Pinned Tabs
Pinning tabs offers three massive advantages for your daily workflow:
- Saved Space: Because pinned tabs hide the website’s title text, they take up about 80% less room on your tab bar, leaving much more space for your other temporary web pages.
- Accident Prevention: Pinned tabs do not have an ‘X’ button. It is physically impossible to accidentally click the ‘X’ and close your email while trying to close a different tab.
- Persistent Location: Pinned tabs are glued to the left side of the screen. Even as you open and close dozens of other tabs throughout the day, your pinned tabs will never shift position. You always know exactly where to find them.
How to Unpin or Close a Pinned Tab
Because there is no ‘X’ button, you might wonder how you are supposed to get rid of a pinned tab when you are done with it.
To Unpin it:
- Right-click the small, pinned icon.
- Select Unpin from the menu.
- The tab will instantly expand back to its normal size and re-join your regular tabs.
To Close it directly:
- Right-click the small, pinned icon.
- Select Close from the very bottom of the menu. (Alternatively, if your mouse has a clickable middle scroll wheel, you can middle-click the pinned tab to kill it instantly).