HOW TO GROUP TABS IN GOOGLE CHROME

Below is the transcript of the above video where you will learn how to group tabs in Google chrome.

MELANIE FOXCROFT:  Maarten, there’s a function in chrome about tab groups. Can you share with me how that works?

MAARTEN KRUGER:  Yes Melanie, this is actually something that I stumbled, well one day I opened chrome and it says new feature and I clicked on it and I was, you know, I read up a little bit about it and I really liked it. So, this is something that I use all the time. Now the challenge that a lot of people have – and I’m one of those people – is that, you know, I need to work with a lot of open tabs every single day and your web browser, when you open too many tabs, your browser becomes really cluttered. You can’t really see anything anymore you know, it’s just, it’s not very, it’s not very conducive for productivity. So, what they’ve basically done is this ability to take a lot of tabs, group them together and collapse them. So, for example, let’s say you take email for example. Now, I’ve opened chrome in incognito mode so I’m not showing you any sensitive information. So, I’m not logged into anything. So, let’s say for example, you use email all the time. So, you can go to Gmail. I’m not going to log in now but you could log in and so you always have your email available. And then you can go on a separate tab and let’s say you can go to google calendar, for example. And so, if I go to google calendar, I’m not gonna log in but there is your calendar there. Now, if I want to take this tab and actually make it part of the email, all I do is I actually just drag it into that thing. You can see the colour changes to the same colour as the tab. It becomes light blue. Yes, so all these things are now grouped together and I can collapse them or I can expand them and you can create new ones. So, let’s say you’ve got like a client and the client is “Client A” for example. So, I can open anything that’s relevant for him, you know, it’s in any random page so what I’d use for my clients is, I’ve got certain documents that I use for each client for example a roadmap document, a changes document, a to do document, and then just a document for…. we’ve got a shared drive that we create for every client as well. It’s got all the information for the specific project grouped together. So, I’ll put the shared drive, the road method, the to do list, everything, I’ll group that together. So, if you want to create a new tag group, all you do is basically just say “add to new tab group” and save your group. And now you can give it like “ABC” so you can call it ABC and you can even assign to it whatever color you like. So, you can put a lot of text in there or you can just have a single letter. Whatever you prefer. And now you can, so there’s the one. And you can move it around. So that’s basically how to group tabs in Google chrome.

MELANIE FOXCROFT:  Maarten, I’ve got an interesting question for you. Does this make your computer slower in any way?

MAARTEN KRUGER:  Not at all! This is just… you’re still using… I’m guessing you that you are referring to all the multiple web pages that you know I’ve opened, so the more pages you have open the more your memory usage will be. But so, you know, I’m quite spoiled with the amount of memory I’ve got in this machine but it’s whether you have 20 pages open and you have them in tab group or whether you have 20 web pages and you don’t have them in tab groups, there’s no performance penalty. So, whatever number of tabs that your browser is comfortable opening with that amount of memory you have on that machine, that should be fine.

MELANIE FOXCROFT:  Well, this is a fantastic feature Maarten. I will definitely use it in my business.

MAARTEN KRUGER:  Sure, and just something that I also want to mention is that once you’ve set up all these groups and you’re happy with them, you want to open your web browsers… every time you open your web browser you want one thing to appear there. What you can actually do is you can go under settings and just say that, “on start-up continue where you left off”. So, every time you open your web browser you will have all your 20 tabs open. You don’t have to open everyone individually. Just something to note is that if I were to open, for example, a new web browser and it would close… let’s say, for example, I open a new browser and I only have one tab open. I must just be careful that I don’t close this one last because it will open where I was when I left off. So, you must always be careful if you open a second web browser and just open a single page, just close that one first and the one with all the pages you must close last. So, that’s something I learned the hard way.  And that’s basically how to group tabs together in Google chrome.

MELANIE FOXCROFT:  That’s a very important point, yes. Thank you, Maarten.

MAARTEN KRUGER:  Pleasure!

Interview done by Melanie Foxcroft from MF Consulting.

TECH TIPS:  GROUP TABS IN GOOGLE CHROME

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