How to group tabs in Chrome

Tab groups are Chrome’s built-in answer to a tab strip that has turned into a row of identical favicons. A group is a colored label with tabs tucked under it; you can name it, collapse it to a single chip, drag it around as a unit, and since 2024, save it so it outlives the window. Here’s how to use them, the parts that are easy to miss, and where they stop.

Create a group

Right-click any tab and choose Add tab to new group. Chrome shows a small bubble: type a name, pick one of the colors, press Enter. The name is optional; an unnamed group is just a colored dot, which is fine for “these three belong together” and useless a week later.

To add more tabs, either drag them onto the group, or right-click them and choose Add tab to group, which lists your existing groups by name. Dragging a tab out of the group removes it. Groups are contiguous, so Chrome keeps member tabs together and slides other tabs out of the way.

There’s no keyboard shortcut for creating a group, and none you can assign; this is one of the few tab actions that still needs the mouse.

Collapse and expand

Click the group’s label and the tabs fold into it, leaving only the chip. Click again to expand. Collapsed groups are the main reason to bother: a window with forty tabs across five collapsed groups reads like five tabs.

One detail worth knowing: collapsing hides tabs but doesn’t stop them. A collapsed group of video tabs uses the same memory it did open, which is a job for Memory Saver or putting tabs to sleep rather than for groups.

The group menu

Right-click the label for everything else:

• New tab in group opens a blank tab inside the group. A plain Ctrl+T opens at the end of the strip, outside any group.
• Ungroup dissolves the group and leaves the tabs where they are.
• Close group closes every tab in it.
• Move group to new window pulls the whole group out into its own window.
• Save group is the toggle that makes the group persistent, covered next.

Save a group so it survives closing

Turn on Save group in that menu and the group gets a chip on the bookmarks bar. Close the window, or close the group, and the chip stays; click it later and the group comes back with its tabs. Saved groups also sync to your other devices when you’re signed in with sync turned on, so a group you built on the desktop is in the bookmarks bar on the laptop.

The rule to remember: an unsaved group is gone when its last tab closes, the same as any other tab. Chrome’s “Continue where you left off” startup setting will restore open groups after a normal restart, and Ctrl+Shift+T reopens a just-closed group as a unit. For anything beyond that, save the group or keep a copy elsewhere; see how to restore tabs after a Chrome crash for what a bad restart actually looks like.

On a phone

Chrome on Android and iOS has tab groups too: in the tab grid, drag one tab onto another to combine them, and tap the group to open it. Saved groups from the desktop show up there with sync on. Naming and coloring work the same way; collapsing is a desktop-only idea, since the grid already hides tabs.

Where groups stop

Groups are a good way to see your tabs. They’re a weak way to keep them, for three reasons.

1. A group lives in one window. If your project is two windows, a group can’t span them, and there’s no way to save a multi-window layout as a group.
2. Saving is per group, by hand. The work you didn’t think to save is the work you lose. Nothing in Chrome writes a copy of your open windows on a schedule.
3. There’s no history. A saved group is its current tab list. The tab you removed from it on Tuesday is not in it anymore.

That gap is what session managers are for, and it’s what the session side of our extension, UtilEngine, does. Press your shortcut (Alt+Z by default), type “save”, and the current window becomes a named session: every tab in order, pinned state included, restorable on any machine you’re signed into. Separately, it snapshots all your open windows every hour (you can change the interval) and keeps 14 days of them, so the window you never saved is recoverable too. When you only remember a tab, the Session Manager searches every tab across all your sessions and snapshots.

Two honest caveats. UtilEngine is paid ($49 once, no subscription), and sessions record windows and tabs, not group membership: restore a session and you get the tabs back in order, but you’ll regroup them yourself. Groups are still the best way to lay out a window; sessions are how you get the window back. Compared side by side with the other ways to save tabs in how to save tabs in Chrome.

Tab groups elsewhere

• Edge and Brave: the same feature with the same menu, since both build on Chromium. Edge also has Collections, which are closer to a reading list than to groups.
• Firefox: added tab groups in 2025, with naming and colors, and drag-to-combine in the tab strip.
• Safari: has had Tab Groups since 2021, in the sidebar rather than the tab strip, and they sync through iCloud.

Common questions

How do I group tabs in Chrome?

Right-click a tab and choose Add tab to new group, then give it a name and a color. Drag other tabs onto the group, or right-click them and choose Add tab to group.

Is there a keyboard shortcut for creating a tab group?

No. Creating a group needs the right-click menu or drag and drop. Once a group exists, Ctrl+Tab and the other tab switching shortcuts work across it.

Do tab groups save when I close Chrome?

Open groups come back if Chrome’s startup setting is Continue where you left off. To keep a group after closing it deliberately, turn on Save group from the group’s menu; it then lives on the bookmarks bar and syncs to your other devices.

How do I reopen a tab group I closed?

Ctrl+Shift+T (Cmd+Shift+T on a Mac) reopens the most recently closed item, and a closed group counts as one item. It’s also listed under Recently closed in the history menu. If the group was saved, click its chip on the bookmarks bar.

Can a tab group contain tabs from two windows?

No. A group belongs to one window. Use Move group to new window to relocate it whole, or a session manager to save a layout that spans several windows.