Chrome tab groups will start rolling out next week on desktops, Chrome OS

Abner Li | May 13 2020 - 9:17 am PT

For the past several Chrome releases, Google has been testing tab groups that let you better organize your browsing experience. The feature is now officially live in the beta channel and will start widely rolling out with Chrome 83 next week.

To create a grouping, right-click on a tab at the top of your screen and select “Add to new group” or “Add to existing group.” These collections are visually organized by color, with each group defaulting to a gray dot at the left.

Tapping lets you name the group — which expands the circle into a pill — and you can choose from eight colors. You can “Ungroup” tabs from this menu or close everything inside, while dragging on the group name lets you move things across the tab strip.

After months of testing, Google has learned that people like organizing tabs by topic, with emoji supported when naming:

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.”

Tab Groups are now live in Chrome Beta, with Google recommending that you restart the browser if it’s not yet appearing on your device. You can also enable it now on Chrome 81 with the following flag:

chrome://flags/#tab-groups

Available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS, it will see a wider launch next week when Chrome 83 arrives in the Stable Channel. However, the rollout will be happening slowly to ensure browser stability and performance. There is no mention about Android or iOS availability today.