We are going to give you some useful tips and also list some tab management extensions to manage Chrome tabs like a boss.
Tips to Manage Multiple Chrome Tabs
Let’s start with a few built-in features of Chrome that will let you manage Chrome tabs one way or another.
1. Pin Tabs
You can pin important tabs on the top-left side of Chrome to save space and also prevent closing tabs accidentally. Right-click on the tab and select “Pin tab” from the menu to pin that tab. A pinned tab only consists of a favicon and doesn’t have a close button (X) that can be accidentally pressed (“Ctrl + W” shortcut still works). This makes it perfect for managing important Chrome tabs.
2. Reopen closed tab
If you accidentally close a tab, you don’t need to go through the history to re-launch it. Just right-click on any empty space in the tabs area and select “Reopen closed tab.” This will open the last closed tab (shortcut is “Ctrl + Shift + T”). You can repeat the process to open multiple closed tabs.
3. Enable “Continue where you left off”
If you have dozens of tabs opened, it can be a pain to reopen all of them if you have to close Chrome. To always continue from the point you closed Chrome, go to “Settings” from the main menu and enable “Continue where you left off”.
4. Sync Open Tabs
You can sync all your opened tabs over all your devices using Chrome Data sync feature. Chrome allows you to sync all your Chrome data to enable you to access it from anywhere, including all opened tabs. Just go to “Settings” and click on “Advanced sync settings” on top. You will see the option to sync open tabs there.
Tab Management Extensions for Chrome
The built-in options are very limited and will not give you full control over all your tabs. If you want to take full control of Chrome tabs, then you need help from Chrome extensions. Below are some good tab management extensions.
1. Tabli
Tabli is a very simple extension for Chrome that will show you all your current opened tabs in a list when you click on the extension button. It shows tabs in all of the windows that are open, and you can even save the opened tabs to restore later.
2. TooManyTabs
You can say that TooManyTabs is a beefed up version of Tabli. When you click on the TooManyTabs extension icon, it will show you a preview of all the tabs that are open in a very colorful interface. The tabs are arranged in packs of 5×5 and make it very easy to find the right one. You can also use the search option to find the right tab. Furthermore, it can also back up/restore tabs to Google drive or an HTML file and also suspend idle tabs to save resources.
3. The Great Suspender
The above two extensions do a great job of accessing the right tab in a clutter. However, The Great suspender focuses on managing the tab resources instead of accessing the right tab. It’s job is simple; just tell it to suspend an idle tab after a specified time (20 sec – 3 days), and it will suspend and free up all the resources the tab was taking. You can easily restore the tab by moving to the tab or clicking in the middle. You can also suspend tabs yourself using shortcuts and context menu buttons, and it supports multi-tab suspension. I have been using this for a few months now, and it is great at keeping my browser light even if I open loads of tabs. The only issue I have faced is that it sometimes forgets the link to the suspended tab when the browser is closed and restarted (i.e. doesn’t restore them), but you can press the “Back” button to easily move back to the original page.
Conclusion
You should be able to get a little satisfaction in Chrome by using the above tips and extensions. If your opened tabs are always less than then, then following the above tips should be enough to keep things straight. Otherwise, a tab management extension is a must. How do you manage tab clutter in Chrome? Share your secret tricks in the comments below.
