Microsoft Edge gets Chromium's Tab Groups feature

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 5, 2020
Internet, Microsoft Edge
|
10

The Canary version of the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge web browser supports the tab groups feature in its latest version.

Google introduced support for tab groups in Google Chrome as a way for users to better manage tabs. Chrome users can create new tab groups and use drag & drop to add or remove sites from groups. Support for custom names and colors is available to better distinguish tab groups from one another.

Google added support for collapsing tab groups in 2020 to hide all open tabs of a group from Chrome's tab bar.

microsoft edge tab groups

The most recent Microsoft Edge Canary version supports tabs group now as well. The feature is not enabled by default and users interested in enabling it need to enable several experimental flags at the time to do so.

The functionality itself is identical to that of Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers that have it already.

Here is how that is done:

  1. Load edge://flags/#edge-tab-groups in the browser's address bar and set the flag to Enabled; this is the main Tab Groups flag that unlocks the core functionality.
  2. If you want tab group collapsing, load edge://flags/#edge-tab-groups-collapse in the address bar and set it to Enabled.
  3. If you want Edge to freeze collapsed tabs, load edge://flags/#edge-tab-groups-collapse-freezing and set the flag to Enabled.
  4. If you want the auto-creation of tab groups, load edge://flags/#edge-tab-groups-auto-create and set the flag to Enabled.
  5. Restart Microsoft Edge when you are done.

Right-click on any open tab in Microsoft Edge and select Add Tab To A New Group to create a new tab group.

Once you have created at least one group, you may use drag and drop to add or remove tabs. The right-click option changes to Add Tab To Group afterwards and includes options to add the tab to an existing group and to create a new group.

A left-click on the tab group title collapses the list of open tabs that it contains, a second click expands the list again.

Right-click on the title of a tab group to open the configuration overlay. You may use it to change the name of the tab group and its color.

edge tab groups configure

Options to create a new tab in the group, ungroup, close the group, and to move the group to a new window are provided as well.

One of the main advantages of using tab groups in most Chromium-based browsers is that it improves tab management, and deals with tab overload in browsers such as Google Chrome. Chrome stops showing site names or icons eventually as you open new tabs in the browser, and in the end, new tabs don't even get an icon anymore in the toolbar so that it becomes impossible to open them without using some sort of third-party extension or closing existing tabs.

Microsoft's implementation does not expand collapsed tab groups when you restart the browser; in Chrome, tab groups do get expanded automatically when you start it.

The feature works well with Microsoft Edge's vertical tabs feature.

You can download the Canary version of Microsoft Edge from Microsoft's website.

Closing Words

It will take some time before the new feature becomes available in stable versions of Microsoft Edge. Even then, it may be disabled by default. Vivaldi's tab stacks feature offers better options at the time, and Mozilla's Containers feature advanced features that improve privacy among other things.

Now You: What is your take on tab groups? Useful feature?

Summary
Microsoft Edge gets Chromium's Tab Groups feature
Article Name
Microsoft Edge gets Chromium's Tab Groups feature
Description
The Canary version of the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge web browser supports the tab groups feature in its latest version.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

  10. Anonymous said on September 28, 2023 at 8:19 am
    Reply

    When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?

  11. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 9:36 am
    Reply

    Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.

    I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.

    1. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 11:01 am
      Reply

      Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to

  12. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 10:48 am
    Reply

    Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to

  13. Mystique said on September 28, 2023 at 12:13 pm
    Reply

    Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
    Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/

    No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.

  14. justputthispostanywhere said on September 29, 2023 at 3:59 am
    Reply

    I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/

    My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.

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