With plenty of tabs clogging my space, I always wished if I could segregate them right inside Chrome without using any extension like OneTab. Sure, I can still stop myself from accidentally closing it by pinning a tab, but grouping them together is another level of productivity hack. Turn out, there is a hidden setting inside Chrome which lets you do exactly that. Not only it lets you bundle Tabs in a group but you can also color-code them for further distinction. Let’s dive into it.
Chrome Flags
If you tinker with Chrome you would already know this, but if you don’t, Chrome Flags are experimental features where Google tries all its features that are still in the development stage and yet to be released in the consumer build. Flag option is not in the open but you can easily access them by clicking here. We recently did a roundup for the best flags which 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 as you follow the steps.
Simply open Flags tab by typing chrome://flags in your Chrome’s address bar and access Flags Tab. You will see a warning, All these features are still in the experimentation stage, so they aren’t completely stable.
You’ll then be displayed the top Flag options available. Simple scroll down to Tab Groups and Enable the option. You’ll be prompted to Relaunch Chrome so the required changes could be made.
Once you’ve relaunched and opened your desired TABs, simply right click to open Tab Options. You’ll notice a new Group option. Select Add to new group option.
As soon as you select Add to a new group option, you’ll notice a new tab crops up to the left of the selected TAB. This is the Group tab which will segregate one group from the other.
Further, you can Name the group according to your choice but also assign a specific color to a certain group so it’s easier for you to notice the difference.
This is how organized it actually looks. You can easily bundle tabs together. Besides giving you a cleaner tab space it also makes your work quick, believe me when I say that. I’ve grouped all my tabs in terms of work, music, video, and trash. This led me to easily ascertain the tabs that I’ve to keep and the ones which are not that important.
OneTab vs Chrome Tab Groups
We talked about OneTab as a great utility tool, but it works a bit differently from Chrome Tab Group. OneTab essentially collapses all the open tabs and groups them all together in a list whereas Tab Groups bundle all the tabs in a specific group together. While Tab Group lets you do that horizontally placing tabs together and further making every group distinct with a separator tab. OneTab lets you name the groups in a list form.
Another major feature that makes these two completely alien to each other is OneTab’s ability to save on memory consumption by Tabs, which Tab Group lacks. So if you’re deciding between these two, I’d suggest OneTab because it gives you more room to utilize. You can also use them together, but remember that if you collapse grouped tabs through OneTab, it won’t recognize the segregator tab.
Closing Words
Using Chrome can really become a daunting task unless you’ve it in control. I personally often hoard tabs. Users generally ignore these functions which can really be helpful and effective both in terms of time saved and cleaner workspace. You can experiment with it, but I’m excited for the final version of this function in the consumer build. Yes, there are few limitations like limited color palette, lack of a separate group tab that lets me see all the groups together. But even in beta, this to me is really worth a try.
I’m really intrigued by Chrome’s flag features and I promise there are many more articles to come. Stay tuned!
