Chrome users may soon save and restore Tab Groups

[harlan4096]

Google is working on expanding its Chrome web browsers tab grouping functionality by adding save and restore options to the feature.

Google introduced The Tab Groups feature in 2020 in development versions of the Chrome browser. Nowadays, tab grouping is available to all users of the stable version.

Just right-click on any open tab in the Chrome browser and select the "add tab to new group" option of the right-click context menu. You may assign colors and custom titles to each group, and use drag & drop or the right-click menu to place additional tabs in a group.

Groups can be collapsed to make room for other tabs in the browser window.

Other features, such as the auto-collapsing of Tab Groups or the freezing of tabs in collapsed groups to save resources are still being worked on.

The latest feature addition that Google is working on adds saving and restoring functionality to Tab Groups.

Tab Groups are saved and restored automatically by Chrome when users start and end browsing sessions. The new feature gives users options to save and restore sessions manually.

Enable the Tab Groups Save feature in Chrome

Note that Google introduced the experimental flag in Chrome Canary to enable the saving of Tab Groups, but the feature is not fully working yet. While you get the option to save a group when you enable the feature, the functionality that handles the saving is not done yet. In other words, it is not functional at this point, but will become functional soon.

To enable the feature, do the following:

1. Load chrome://flags/#tab-groups-save in the Chrome address bar.
   
2. Set the experimental flag to Enabled.
   
3. Restart the browser.
   

Once enabled and restarted, right-click on the head of the Tab Groups and toggle the Save Group option.

It is unclear how groups can be restored using the functionality, since the feature is not available fully yet. Saving is only useful if there is an option to restore. Whether it will become available when you right-click on the tab bar or elsewhere remains to be seen.

Closing Words

The ability to save Tab Groups, and possibly restore them, is a welcome feature addition. It could allow Chrome users to save entire groups and restore them on demand, before closing them again without losing any of the tabs or the group in the process.

How that feature is going to affect browser extensions, such as Acid Tabs, Simple Window Saver or Tabs Plus, that offer similar functionality remains to be seen.

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