Today, browsing without tabs is an unthinkable fact. Rarely is the time we open the browser and only visit one website. Thanks to the tabs, we break with the way of browsing in the past, opening dozens of windows, each one with a website. Tabs have been around for a long time, but the truth is that they haven’t changed or evolved for a long time to revolutionize browsing. Google is trying, and thanks to it we can find the most interesting functions and features such as ” groups of tabs “.
If we have many websites open at the same time, thanks to the groups of tabs we will be able to have them much more organized, being able to have all the similar or related ones at hand, and even close them at once when we no longer need them. Although users find it difficult to change habits, when they decide to give eyelashes a try, the truth is that they continue to use them in the long term. In addition, with the improvements that Google is preparing for these groups of tabs, using them will not only be more comfortable, but it will also help us save CPU and RAM memory.
Let’s see how they work.
Activate automatic tab groups
This function has been available to users of the Canary branch of the browser since last September, when version 87 arrived in this version. However, with the arrival of Chrome 87 to the stable branch, these automatic tab groups are now available to all users. Of course, we must activate them manually to be able to use them.
To do this, we will write the following in the address bar:
chrome://flags/#tab-groups-auto-create
And we will activate the corresponding flag. After
After doing so, we will restart the browser to apply it and that’s it. When Chrome reopens automatically we can start enjoying this new feature.
How does it work? Very easy. All we have to do is open any web page, and from it open the links we want in new tabs. These links will be grouped directly within a group of tabs, since they are supposed to have the same purpose.
Once the automatic group has been created, we can continue opening pages from any of the websites of said group, and all of them will open within this group. If we want any not to be part of it, we will have to separate it manually.
This feature is not perfect. Ideally, the open tabs of the same domain should be grouped within the same group. However, this automatic function also groups links from different domains. Also, if we open two tabs separately, even if they are from the same domain, they will not be grouped automatically. Google in this sense has to refine its operation a little more.
Other features to enhance tabs in Chrome
Automatic groups is not the only function that Google prepares to improve the way we work with tabs every day. For example, within the flags we can find a call ” Tab Groups Collapse “, which will allow us to collapse and extend the tabs of a group of tabs if it is enabled.
But the most interesting, without a doubt, is ” Tab Groups Collapse Freezing “. This function, in the experimental phase, what it tries is to freeze (suspend) all the tabs of a group when we collapse it. A good way to save CPU and RAM memory by taking advantage of this Chrome function when we want to have tabs open but we do not plan to use them in a while.
