How to Create Tab Groups in Android’s Chrome Browser

One of Chrome’s best features for staying organised is coming to Android: the almighty “tab groups,” which let you bunch up your tabs into more useful chunks rather than randomly scattering them across your browser — or, on your phone, on separate pages. However, you might have to enable a semi-hidden flag in your browser to access this useful feature today.

To get started, make sure you’re running the latest version of Chrome on your Android device, updatable via the Google Play Store. Then, launch the browser and enter this into the address bar: chrome://flags

You’ll be taken to a screen that looks like this:

Do a quick search for “Tab Grid,” tap on the drop-down for the Tab Grid Layout flag, and select the regular “Enabled” option. Relaunch Chrome and tap on the box to the right of your address bar to open up a few new tabs. You’ll immediately see that they’re now organised in a grid layout, instead of displaying pages sitting on top of one another.

How do you group these tabs? It’s easy. Simply long-press on one and drag it over another. Repeat the process to add more tabs to your tab group:

You can also tap into the group itself and use the “+” icon to add new tabs within it as you see fit. To group multiple tabs at once without having to long-press each one individually, tap on the triple-dot icon in the upper-right corner of this screen and select the new Group tabs option. You’ll then be able to just tap on all the free tabs you want to arrange in a group, and then tap the Group button to make them become new friends.

Finally, if you long-press on any hyperlink in a normal Chrome window, you’ll see the option to open the new tab in a group:

Tap it, and the original page you were viewing will now be grouped together with the new link you long-pressed, and you’ll see icons for both at the bottom of your Chrome browser. This is the easy method for navigating between tabs in your group, and you can also use the “+” icon to the right to quickly add more tabs.

Of course, if you don’t like the grid layout or tab groups, you can always disable the feature again using the same Tab Grid Layout flag as before. Simply set it to “disabled,” and your browser will revert to the way it was before — for now.