It seems that Google is working hard to bring back, and improve, one of Firefox‘s discarded features: tab groups. Although this function had been available in the form of a flag for some time, it was not until a week ago when Google has automatically enabled it for all users. These groups of tabs can help us improve our productivity if we work with many tabs at the same time, but it requires spending time to create the groups manually. Fortunately, Google is aware of this. And very soon you will end this problem.
The new Canary version of Google Chrome, 87.0.4266.0, brings with it an interesting novelty that will allow us to get even more out of these new groups of tabs. This new function comes with the name ” Tab Groups Auto Create “, and, as indicated, it will allow us to create groups of tabs automatically without us having to do it manually.
To do this, Chrome will analyze the domains of the websites that we open and, when two tabs of the same domain are opened, they will be grouped into a new group. That simple For example, if we open 7 Twitter tabs and 5 Wikipedia tabs, we will automatically have two groups, one with Twitter and the other with Wikipedia. And so on.
Activate the experimental function
For now, this feature isn’t working yet, but it shouldn’t take long for Google to enable it. Meanwhile, we can leave our browser ready to start using this function by following the following steps. The first thing is to make sure we are using the latest version of Chrome Canary , 87.0.4266.0, or a later version.
If we already have it, the next thing will be to open the Chrome advanced functions window, the flags, and we will look for “Tab Groups Auto Create”. We can reach it directly by typing the following in the address bar:
chrome://flags/#tab-groups-auto-create
Once this experimental function is activated, we will only have to restart the browser. When we reopen it, the automatic tab groups will be ready to go. Although, as we have said, Google has not enabled the function yet, only the flag.
Other features to enhance tab groups
The creation of automatic tab groups is not the only improvement that this function will receive. Google is working to add more functions and features that allow users to work more comfortably with many tabs open at the same time.
One of the features that will arrive very soon, and that we can already enable through its corresponding flag, is the one that allows us to collapse and hide a group of tabs . In this way, if we click on the group, it will collapse and all the tabs will be hidden. And when you click again, they will be shown again. But there is more.
Google is also working on an experimental feature that will allow the browser to selectively suspend groups . In this way, the browser will be able to suspend all the tabs of a group when we are not using it and it will free up large amounts of RAM.
At the moment, all these functions are available in the Canary branch of the browser. However, only collapsing groups of tabs works; the other two are not yet functional.
