By Edward Jung, UX Eningeer, Chrome
There are two types of people in the world: tab minimalists who have just a few tabs open at a time and tab collectors who have...significantly more. For minimalists and collectors alike, we’re bringing a new way to organize your tabs to Chrome: tab groups. This feature is available now in Chrome Beta.
Now, with a simple right-click, you can group your tabs together and label them with a custom name and color. Once the tabs are grouped together, you can move and reorder them on the tab strip.
We’ve been testing out tab groups for several months now (as have some of you), and we’re finding new ways to stay organized. Through our own usage and early user research, we’ve found that some people like to group their Chrome tabs by topic. For instance, it helps if you're working on several projects, or looking through multiple shopping and review sites.
Others have been grouping their tabs by how urgent they are-- “ASAP,” “this week” and “later.” Similarly, tab groups can help keep track of your progress on certain tasks: “haven’t started,” “in progress,” “need to follow up” and “completed.” My pro tip is that you can use an emoji as a group name such as ❤️ for inspiration or 📖 for articles to read. Tab groups are customizable so you can decide how to use them. And just like regular tabs, your groups are saved when you close and reopen Chrome.
Chrome’s stability and performance are important to us, so we’re releasing tab groups slowly in our upcoming version of Chrome, which begins rolling out next week. Tab groups will be available for Chrome on desktop across Chrome OS, Windows, Mac and Linux. If you want to preview tab groups today, it’s available in the latest version of Google Chrome Beta.