Organizing Chrome

There are various way to unclutter and simplify in chrome.

• Chrome tab groups

  • Make tab groups persistent: You need to set restart to “Continue where you left off”

    • Obviously you need to do this before you start using tabs

    • They will survive restarting Chrome and restarting the OS – tested on Mac, Win & Linux

    • I am using Chrome Version 120.0.6099.129 – so you need a recent version

    • If Chrome does not restart cleanly you can use History > open all tabs to recover them

    • NOTE: This applies to the local machine only the settings are not shared between devices – this is probably what I prefer anyway as I don’t want to share to other devices

      Open

      

  • There is an experimental flag to enable sharing with other devices

    • First you need to enable the “Tab Groups Save and Sync” flag

      Open

      

    • Then you should see the “Save Group” option enabled it looks something line this:

  • These are chrome tab groups – currently I am using the concepts group while writing this article

  • Just right click on a tab to manage your tab groups

  • Tab groups can be managed like other tabs

    • NOTE: You cannot bookmark a tab group – seems to me that would be a nice feature 😊

  • Click on a tab group to rename it or change the colour

  • I decided to use blue for my work related tabs

  • Tabs can drastically reduce the number of Chrome Windows and Mac Virtual screens

    • Each of my tabs could have been another chrome window often on another virtual screen

• Sleep inactive tabs to save memory

  • Chrome has this built in for the latest versions

  • There are also various plugins

• Chrome also has profiles and it is probably a good idea to setup separate work and private profiles

  • You could also setup a profile for a hobby perhaps I should setup a coffee profile

  • I have not tried profiles yet but I am planning to soon – I will probably say more after that

There are also various plugins to help organize and remember tabs

• All of these plugins groups tabs and save/open those groups

• These groups of tabs can be opened in a new or existing Chrome window

  • So if you want to “group” the tabs “visually” you need to use a Chrome window

• Unfortunately none of the plugins i found work with Chrome tab groups

  • To be fair they do organise tabs visually usually in a seperate tab or window – but this does help to visually unclutter the your Chrome windows (which I think is a big + for stress reduction)

• Tabli

  • Saves its groups as bookmarks

  • If it would save/restore tab groups as bookmarks it would be a killer feature IMHO

• Session Buddy – seems popular has free and paid versions

• Workona – seems like a well sorted commercial tab manager (free version is limited)

• One Tab – a limited but useful tool

• Brain Tool – tame your tabs and control your browser, looks interesting

• There are dozens if not 100s more that you can find – but the above seem to be some of the better and more interesting ones