Chrome Story

Update: Google Chrome is getting a new flag to automatically create tabs groups. When you open links from the same website, Chrome will automatically group them.

“Tab Groups Auto Create: Automatically creates groups for users, if tab groups are enabled”

We heard about Chrome’s upcoming Tab Groups feature back in November. Today, I have some updates to share.

First up, a quick video demo of what we have so far. On Canary channel, I can now add tabs to groups. I can also remove them from groups and also create multiple groups.

There are no visual cues to separate a group from another. We might have to wait for some more time to such visual elements.

Now, some news on what to look for in future

Tab Groups Will Sync Across Devices

Google has a design document for the Tab Groups feature, but that is not available publicly. However, we occasionally see pieces of information on Chromium repositories. Like this one:

Open new tab from website in a group.

Tabs opened from a link with middle click, shift middle click, or’Open
in new tab’ from the link’s context menu will open in the current tab’s
group.

This CL is part of the prototype of the above-described tab groups
feature. The prototype will allow users to create and manipulate groups
primarily via tab context menus, and will display tab group affiliation
in the tabstrip. Future work will include persisting and syncing groups,
manipulating groups via tab dragging, and a dropdown menu for the group
headers. See go/chrome-tab-groups-design

Let me summarize the main points for you as a list:

• If you add a website, for example chromestory.com to a group, and then open more links from the same website, Chrome will automatically add them to the same group. If you are researching something from Wikipedia (where you end up clicking links after links for related topics) Chrome will automatically add those to a group for easy management.
• We will soon see tab groups information displayed on the tab itself. If you watched my video, you might have noticed that there is no way to see which is group one and and which is group two. This will soon change, but we do not know it will look like.
• In the future you will be able to drag and drop tabs from a group to another.
• Chrome will sync these tab groups across devices. This is BIG if you ask me. Set up a group of tabs on your Android phone, pick them up from your Chromebook later!

So, what do you think, is this feature something that you are excited about? Let me know in comments!