How to efficiently organize page tabs in Chrome and various browsers- Engadget 中文版

We’ve all been there: buried in a project or rummaging through Wikipedia, only to find a bunch of browser tabs open, but don’t know how to keep them organized look.

Fortunately, there are a lot of features available for tidying up browser tabs. We have sorted out the most practical paging management techniques for the four most used browsers on the market (Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox), including lesser-known built-in tools, as well as useful plug-ins provided by third parties.

Organize Chrome’s tabs

Google Chrome is undoubtedly the most used browser in the world, but many users are still unaware of the built-in tab management tools. One of the tricks is to use the “Pagination Group” function to integrate multiple tabs into groups, and then assign label names and colors to these groups to distinguish themes or simply separate business and private tabs, and click the group Group tab can collapse or expand all tabs in the group.

You can create a new tab group, or add a tab to an existing group by right-clicking on the tab you want to move, selecting Add Tab to New Group, and selecting the group the tab will be added to Group. You can also press and drag a tab to add or remove a tab from the group by dragging the tab into or out of the group. The above operations can also be applied to multiple selected tabs at the same time (hold down Ctrl on Windows or Cmd on macOS when clicking to select multiple tabs).

Right-click on the group tab to change the group name and color, ungroup all tabs within the group, close the group entirely, or move the group to a new window. You can also drag the group tab from an existing window to move the group to a new window. If you accidentally close a tab group, just go to Chrome’s three-dot menu, select “Record”, find the group name, and click “Restore Group”.

However, regardless of whether you use the tab group function, you can use the “Search tab” button to quickly search the tabs you have opened. This button is located on the down arrow in the upper right corner of the window. You can also press Ctrl + Shift + A on Windows, or Cmd + Shift + A on macOS to open the search tab menu. The Search Tabs menu provides a neat vertical list of all currently open tabs, as well as recently closed tabs. You can also close the tab directly here. If there is a tab that is playing audio or video, the menu will be listed separately. Alternatively, you can search for open tabs directly from Chrome’s address bar by typing “@tabs” into the address bar and pressing the space bar or tab key to enable this feature.

If you plan to separate the tabs into different windows, you can give each window a different custom name for easy identification. For example, if you have many work-related tabs in one window, you can go to the window you want to name, right-click on the empty space next to the new tab (or “+”) icon, and select “Name Window”, you can name this window “Work”.

In the same menu, you can also select “Bookmark all tabs” to bookmark all currently open tabs and place them in a specific folder. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + D to use this feature.

Managing tabs on a smartphone may not be so necessary, after all, you may only be looking at one tab at a time. However, we also found that you can still create tabbed groups in Chrome on Android by tapping the square “Switch Tabs” button, then holding down a specific tab and dragging that tab to another on the tab.

This feature is not available on iPhone and iPad, but you can still search the tabs you have open by clicking the “Switch Tabs” button and then selecting the “Search” icon in the upper left corner. You can also bookmark one or more tabs from the Switch Tabs menu by pressing and holding an open tab. If you want to add multiple pages at a time, first press “Edit”, select “Pages”, then check the pages you want to bookmark, and finally click “Add to…” -> “Add Bookmark”.

Organize Edge’s tabs

Microsoft Edge was developed using the same code base as Chrome, so it is conceivable that Edge’s page management functions are quite similar to Google Chrome. Edge also has tabbed groups, which work in much the same way: right-click on one or more tabs and select “Add index tab to new group”. Also, like Chrome, you can customize the name and color of each group. The tabs within each group can also be quickly collapsed or expanded with a click of a tab.

In addition, using the shortcut keys Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + A can also call up the tab search menu, vertically list the currently opened tab and the recently closed tab, and mark the tab that is playing media. The “@tabs” address bar shortcut mentioned above doesn’t work here, but it’s still possible to assign custom names to windows.

Another way to access Edge’s other tab-related tools is through the dedicated “Tab Actions Menu” in the upper left corner. If you don’t see this icon, please click the three-point menu button of Edge, go to “Settings” -> “Appearance” -> “Customize Toolbar”, and then toggle “Show Index Tab Action Menu” to the active state That’s it. Clicking on this icon will open the tab search menu, a list of recently closed tabs, and Edge tabs open on other devices.

You can also turn on Edge’s Vertical Tabs mode on the Tab Actions Menu. This moves the index tab to the left side of the window from its original position above the URL bar. This arrangement is not what everyone is used to, but because of the larger space, it is easier for you to identify the opened index tabs. If you don’t want to display the “Tab Action Menu” on Windows, but want to switch between standard and vertical index tab mode, you can press Ctrl + Shift + , (comma).

Like other browsers, you can also save Edge’s index tabs as bookmarks (or “favorites”). But we’re going to quickly talk about the browser’s Highlights tool. You can press Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Y, or click the icon with two squares and a plus sign in the upper right. This should be regarded as a native web page fetching tool, not a complete index tag management tool, but if you plan to save items such as web pages, images, text notes, etc., you can click “+ Add current page” in a specific “Collection” . On macOS, you can also right-click an index tab to add all open tabs to the Collection at once.

Organize Safari’s tabs

Like Chrome and Edge, Apple’s Safari browser can organize tabs into individual groups. You can set it in the following ways. One way is to click the down arrow at the top left of the toolbar, then click “Add a blank tab group”, or select “Add a tab group from # tabs” (“#” is the open tabs). Next, you’ll be prompted to customize a name for each group. You can also find the same options under the “File” menu, or by double-clicking any open tab.

Click the “Show Sidebar” button in the upper right corner to view, rename, delete, and rearrange tab groups as desired. If you two-finger-click the name of a tab group in the sidebar, then select “Copy Link,” you can create a neatly organized list of all the links in that group, ready to paste into a document or in the chat room. An icon above the sidebar that looks like two overlapping squares with a plus sign is another way to create new tab groups. You can also go to “File” -> “Show Sidebar” or press Cmd + Shift + L on the keyboard to open the sidebar.

To add a tab to a group, double-tap the tab with two fingers, select Move to Tab Group, then select the group you want to move to. If the sidebar is already open, you can also directly drag the tabs into the group. To quickly switch between groups, click the current group’s name in the upper left corner, then select the group you want to view from the drop-down menu that appears. If you have several Apple devices, you can sync these tab collections across your devices as long as they are all connected to the same iCloud account.

The function of the sidebar is somewhat similar to the vertical index tab viewing mode in Edge. If you mouse over #Tabs at the top of the sidebar, or the name of any tab group, you can see a right arrow. Click on this arrow to see a list of the tabs contained within (arranged vertically). You can also view your bookmarks or Reading List in a similar format at the bottom of the sidebar. However, unlike Edge, you can’t hide the horizontal tab column in Safari.

What’s more annoying is that Safari doesn’t let you select and drag multiple tabs from the tab bar at one time, you can only resign yourself to drag the tabs one by one into a new window. However, you can easily sort tabs by first two-finger-tapping a tab (or opening the Window menu), then selecting “Arrange Tabs By.” You can rearrange all currently open tabs by page title or website.

To view your open tabs more easily, click the Tab Overview icon. This icon is in the upper right corner and looks like two overlapping squares. This will display all your tabs in a grid, and the tabs will shrink into large thumbnails, making it easier to find specific pages. There are other ways to find a specific page, including selecting “View” -> “Show Tab Overview”, pressing Cmd + Shift + on the keyboard, or clicking with two fingers on the tab group in the sidebar .

In the upper right corner of the Tab Overview is the search bar. This feature is also available for iPhone and iPad. Unfortunately, this search can only search tabs in the current group, not tabs in other tab groups or windows. Typing keywords directly into the address bar will usually suggest several open related tabs, but not the full set of results.

For websites that you plan to visit regularly, you can click Cmd + D, or go to “Bookmarks” -> “Add Bookmark” to set this tab as a bookmark. If you want to bookmark multiple open tabs, select “Bookmarks” -> “Add these tabs to bookmarks”.

Many of the tips mentioned here can also be used in Safari on iPhone and iPad. To create a tab group on iPhone, tap “Tab Overview”, press and hold a tab, and select “Move to Tab Group”; or long press the address bar while viewing a web page to Can. To browse through groups of tabs, or to add all open tabs to a group, tap the down arrow at the bottom of the Tabs Overview screen (on an iPad, the arrow will be in the upper right corner).

Declutter Firefox’s tabs

Firefox, by Mozilla, isn’t as popular as it used to be, but it’s still a great choice if you’re concerned about data privacy, customization, or wanting to escape the clutches of the tech giants. It’s just that Firefox’s native tab management tools aren’t as complete as Chrome, Edge, or Safari. By default, Firefox doesn’t have tabbed groups, custom window names, or a vertically tabbed view mode, although you can add a number of plugins (we’ll cover a few later) to fill this gap.

However, you can still see a complete list of each window’s tabs by clicking the “List All Tabs” button (down arrow icon) in the upper right corner, above which you can also access the “Search Tabs” function. If you find it too troublesome, directly enter relevant keywords in the address bar, and you can see the corresponding opened tab at the bottom of the pop-up drop-down list. Another method is to enter a keyword in the address bar to search, and add a % symbol before or after the keyword to limit the search scope to the currently opened tab.

Like most browsers, you can pin tabs, create bookmarks, close multiple tabs at once, and drag multiple tabs into new windows at once in Firefox. To put all currently open tabs into the bookmarks folder, right-click on any tab, select “Select All Tabs”, then right-click again, and select “Bookmark Tab” .

To open all bookmarked tabs in a folder, go to the bookmarks menu or bookmarks toolbar (depending on where they’re saved), right-click, and select Open All Bookmarks. If you want to search for a specific bookmark, please enter a keyword search in the address bar, and add the * symbol before or after the keyword to limit the search scope to the bookmark.

If you want to be more organized, you can also assign custom labels to bookmarks in Firefox. When you click the star icon on a specific page, you can add a custom label to the pop-up menu, or click Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + O to open the complete bookmark collection library, and then add labels as needed . You can also click the menu button on the right (marked with three lines), then select “Bookmarks” -> “Manage Bookmarks”.

Once set up, just type a tag into the address bar to find bookmarks, or add a + sign in the address bar to limit your search to tagged bookmarks.

You can also go to the Firefox View page to see a neat list of recently closed tabs, just click on the little Firefox logo pinned to the upper left corner. In addition, you can also press the shortcut key Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + T to reopen the last closed tab.

Finally, let’s talk about Firefox’s “containers” feature. The focus of this feature is privacy, not reducing the number of open tabs. The idea is to separate browser cookies for different tab groups, so that you can log into a website with multiple accounts in the same window, or make it impossible for a website to know information about other tabs outside of a specific container. Containers can use different colors to distinguish paging, and it can also be regarded as another way to organize paging.

On macOS, the container is a plug-in that needs to be installed separately, but after the setup is complete, you can right-click, select “Open in New Container Tab”, and then select the container to view. The container preset has four presets. To create a new container, click the menu button and select Settings. Then look for the “Pagination” sub-menu, click the “Settings…” button next to “Enable Container Pagination”, then click “Add Container”, and choose the name, color and icon you want to use.

Third-Party Pagination Plugins

The above built-in browser tools should be able to help us manage complicated paging more or less, but if there are other needs, there are still a large number of third-party plug-ins that can help. The most popular should be OneTab, Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari can install this plug-in program. Once installed, a small icon will appear next to the address bar. Just click the icon, and all the tabs that are open but not pinned in the window will be collapsed into another page, arranged into a neat list of links. Here you can open and delete tabs individually, or open or delete them all at once; drag a tab to another link group created before; or convert a link list into a shareable URL. Of course, there are other plug-in programs to choose from, but OneTab has a simple interface, fast execution speed, and is super easy to use. What’s even better is that it allows the browser to take up less memory space.

On Firefox, Chrome and Edge, you can also install Tab Session Manager, which is similar to OneTab. Regardless of whether the tabs are opened on different windows, all opened tabs can be saved at one time. It does not turn off pagination, but instead displays it as a vertical list in a drop-down menu. You can add tabs to specific tab groups, sync “sessions” between devices, or search for tabs directly in the menu. You can also access tabs in closed windows.

Tab management plugins are especially important for Firefox users. For example, Tree Style Tab will add a vertical detailed page view mode, while Window Titler allows you to add custom labels to the window. There’s also Simple Tab Groups, a plugin that may be less intuitive to use than the built-in tabbed group tools in Chrome, Edge, or Safari, but still provides similar functionality for Firefox.