Google Chrome

Google will add a scrollable tab bar to Chrome to avoid tiny tabs in a future update

Ben Schoon | Nov 28 2018 - 8:36 am PT

If you’ve ever used Chrome for an extended period of time, you’ve probably run into a moment when you have so many tabs open that you can’t read them. Now, Google has confirmed that it will be introducing a scrollable tab bar in a later update to Chrome.

As confirmed by a Google developer on Reddit (via Techdows, thanks Venkat), the company is working on adding a scrollable tab bar to its Chrome browser. This isn’t some crazy new feature, in fact it’s one you can already see in Mozilla Firefox.

In its current form, Chrome will just continue to make tab sizes smaller and smaller as you open more. This is fine for the first several depending on the size of your monitor, but if you’ve got a couple dozen open, you’ll likely be lucky to even see icons to identify what a tab contains.

With a scrollable tab bar in Chrome, though, the browser will show tabs at a specific size at some point and simply let you scroll through them. It’s a slightly more elegant solution in the long run.

For most people, this feature probably won’t affect much in terms of how often you close tabs. However, for those who like to test the limits of their computers, a scrollable tab bar will make keeping as many Chrome tabs as you want open just a little bit easier. It’ll probably also make tab groups just a bit more useful as well.