How to Group Tabs in Chrome (Step by Step)

Introduction

Tab groups are one of the most useful features Chrome has added in years. They let you cluster related tabs together, label them, and collapse them out of the way — turning a chaotic strip of tabs into something you can actually navigate. This guide walks through exactly how to group tabs in Chrome, the keyboard shortcuts that speed it up, and how to keep your groups from disappearing.

How to create a tab group in Chrome

Creating a group takes a few seconds:

1. Right-click any tab and choose "Add tab to new group."
2. A colored dot appears next to the tab — click it to name the group and pick a color.
3. Drag other tabs onto the group to add them, or right-click a tab and choose "Add tab to group" → your group name.

You can also select multiple tabs first — hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) and click several tabs, or Shift-click a range — then right-click and add them all to a group at once.

Name and color-code your groups

Naming and coloring is what makes groups scannable. Click the group label to open its menu, type a name ("Research," "Client A," "Reading"), and choose a color. Color-coding lets you find the right cluster at a glance without reading every label.

Good naming conventions to try:

• By project or client: "Redesign," "Acme Corp"
• By status: "To read," "In progress," "Reference"
• By context: "Work," "Personal," "Research"

Collapse, move, and manage groups

Click a group’s label to collapse it — the tabs fold away behind the label, reclaiming space in your tab strip. Click again to expand. You can drag an entire group left or right to reorder it, or drag it out into its own window.

Right-click a group label for more options: ungroup, close the whole group, move the group to a new window, or (in recent Chrome versions) save the group so it can be reopened later.

Tab group keyboard shortcuts

Chrome doesn’t assign default shortcuts to every group action, but these speed things up:

• Ctrl+Shift+A (Cmd+Shift+A on Mac): open the tab search box to jump to any tab, including ones inside collapsed groups.
• Ctrl/Cmd + click: select multiple tabs to group at once.
• Drag and drop: the fastest way to move tabs in and out of groups.

The catch: Chrome tab groups don’t always stick

The biggest frustration with Chrome tab groups is that they’re tied to the window. Close the window — or have Chrome crash — and ungrouped tabs and the group structure can vanish. Chrome’s "Save group" helps, but it saves individual groups to the bookmarks bar, not your full multi-window workspace, and it has limits on how many groups you can keep.

If you’ve ever rebuilt your carefully organized groups after a restart, you know the problem. That’s where a dedicated tab manager comes in.

Keep your groups permanently with Nest

Nest brings the same grouping idea — organizing tabs into named, color-coded categories — but makes it persistent and recoverable. Your categories survive restarts and crashes, sync across devices, and can be saved as full named sessions.

• Sort tabs into categories that persist beyond a single window
• Set domain rules so a site’s tabs route to the right category automatically
• Save the whole layout as a named session and restore it in one click
• Add notes to a category so you remember why it exists
• Recover your groups after a crash instead of rebuilding them

Use Chrome’s built-in groups for quick, in-the-moment clustering, and Nest when you need that organization to last.

Conclusion

Grouping tabs in Chrome is simple: right-click, add to a group, name it, color it, collapse it. The harder part is keeping that structure over time. Chrome’s built-in groups handle the basics; a tab manager like Nest makes your organization durable — so the time you spend grouping tabs pays off long after you close the window.