Google rolls out new ‘tab groups’ feature for Chrome

Google is rolling out a new feature for its Google Chrome browser to help users better manage their open tabs.

The new feature will let “tab collectors” and “tab minimalists” group their open tabs together and organize them accordingly.

Users can group and label their tabs with a right-click. They can set a custom name for their tab and colour code them as well.

Once the tabs are grouped together, users can move and reorder them on the tab strip. The search giant has been testing the feature for months. According to the feedback, users often tend to organize their tabs by topic.

“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,” Edward Jung, UX Engineer, Chrome said in an official blog post announcing the feature.

While other users group their tabs based on requirement and urgency. Some examples shared by Jung are-- “ASAP,” “this week” and “later.”

Some users also use tabs to keep track of the progress of their tasks: “haven’t started,” “in progress,” “need to follow up” and “completed.”

According to Jung, it is convenient for users to use an emoji for naming the tabs.

Tab groups are customizable. It is up to users to decide how to use them. Similar to regular tabs, tab groups are saved when a user closes the browser. They can access them again when they reopen Chrome.

Google is currently rolling out tab groups for its latest beta version of Google Chrome. The feature will be rolled out on the new update of Chrome on the desktop across Chrome OS, Windows, Mac and Linux when it begins rolling out next week.

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