The Chrome Android app is being updated with a new interface for switching tabs and a new tab grouping feature to help organize open web pages, 9to5Google reports. The new interface and functionality have appeared for some users after the release of Chrome version 88 last month, but it doesn’t seem to be available to everyone yet.
The grid layout replaces the previous interface that consisted of a vertical list of tabs and is similar to Chrome’s existing iOS tab interface. About six tabs are shown on the screen at a time and can be slid left or right to close them. Incognito tabs can be accessed via a small icon at the top of the screen.
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Tab groups, in turn, are similar to a feature that has been available in the desktop version of Chrome since last year and offer a more convenient way to organize your guides. The tab grouping also offers a new shortcut to jump between tabs in the same group via a menu that appears at the bottom of the application. On Android, you can organize tabs into groups from the grid layout screen by dragging them to each other, and there are also options to form tab groups in the floating menu, as well as the context menu that opens when you press long to open a new tab.
although 9to5Google notes that the features started rolling out last week, they don’t appear to be available to all Chrome users yet. However, you can enable them manually using Chrome’s experimental flags. We found that it is possible to make them appear by navigating to chrome: // flags in the address bar and then searching and activating “Tab grid layout”, “Tab groups”, “Tab group continuation” and “Tab Groups User Interface Improvements”. We found out that we needed to restart Chrome twice for the new interface to appear.