Google Chrome Tabs Hacks

There are the openly available Google Chrome extensions when it comes to customizing Chrome, and then there are the hidden experimental flags concealed deep inside the heart of Chrome itself. To enhance tab performance, we think with some private settings with mixed results. For its beta programs, Google is renowned. For example, Gmail spent five years as a “beta” project until it became the cornerstone of the productivity strategy of Google. Other ventures were not even as fortunate, like Google Reader, and were shut down. One of the things I like most about Google is that it’s not only willing to experiment, but it’s helpful to experiment and encourage users to think with work in progress openly. Google is also planning significant improvements to the way Chrome tabs operate, but you might not notice them. That takes me to Google Chrome’s strange, wacky, wonderful world of experiments. All you have to do is type chrome:/flags/ into the Chrome Omnibox (the URL entry area), and you will be presented with a full cornucopia of tweaks, extensions, and technical hacks to discover and enjoy. But let’s talk about Chrome’s tabs. I don’t know about you, but there are a lot of Chrome tabs I like to use, and I still look for new tricks. I share a range of experimental tab features of Chrome in this article that are cool. Others are attributes that you are continually bound to use, while others are not exactly ready for prime time.

1. Hover Cards Tab

Usually, it can be challenging to say which tab includes which item when you have many chrome tabs open. Chrome has been using small tooltips to display the knowledge for a long time, but it can be tiny and hard to read: But if you go to and trigger chrome:/flags/#tab-hover-cards, you’ll see a larger and more readable version of the full title of the tab.

2. Images Of Tab Hover Card

With another experimental environment, you can give the hovercard function a boost, located at chrome:/flags/#tab-hovercard-images. This feature displays a thumbnail of the most recent tab material that is hovering over. For this feature to work, you must have allowed the Hover Cards experiment first. This role is helpful, but it feels a little hacky. The picture is blank if you hover over a tab that you haven’t visited yet.

3. Groups Of Chrome Tabs

This is a cool trait that is certainly not ready for prime time. You may use the Chrome:/flags/#tab-groups function if you want to organize your Chrome tabs into groups (say, for ZDNet articles and G Suite apps). When you turn this on, you’ll get a new menu item, Add to New Category If you select this menu item, you’ll get a new group indicator and a custom colour will highlight the Chrome tabs intended for that group: Once you have one or more groups, you’ll be able to allocate tabs to specific groups, delete tabs from groups, or build new groups with  Chrome tabs already in a group In August, my CNET colleague Katie Conner wrote about this feature, but she used Chrome’s Canary build (a rolling pre-release version accessible for the adventurous). She was able to alter the names and colors of the classes in the Canary building at the time. Using the production release, I can’t do so. I also find the spacing around the name of the community to be unnecessary, but the spacing seemed fine in the Canary house. Just stay tuned. This is possibly a feature that is coming to Chrome. Although it’s not ideal for Chrome release production users, at least you can now tinker around with it. On the upcoming release of tab classes, ZDNet is also posted, so stay tuned.

4. Two Tab Experiments Which Don’t Work Yet

In Chrome, I discovered two other tab checks, chrome:/flags/#scrollable-tab strip and chrome:/flags/#drag-to-pin-tabs. These options are shown in the screenshot as disabled, but first I allowed the features to try them: I assume the scrollable tab strip would offer us a feature that has long been available to Firefox users, the ability to scroll left and right across the window with wider tab names, based on the definition. Drag to Pin Chrome Tabs doesn’t seem to be exactly mission-critical as the choice for the Pin Tab works very well. Stay tuned, if they ever make it out of the lab, we’ll see.

5. Send Tab To Self: One That Graduated

There’s a fun little experiment called # enable-send-tab-to-self that has actually graduated from Chrome 77 and is now a regular part of it. Now, when you call Send to Computers, right-click on the tab and pick another device that is logged in. The recipient computer will receive a notification that will open the sent tab when you select it. Most of the time, I found that this worked. Sending Chrome tabs between Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android works with this feature. Unfortunately, users of iOS are left out. The role is inaccessible to them.

6. Chrome Is Used As A Text Editor

Often all we need is a simple place where a few words can be jolted down. Why not only use Chrome’s built-in text editor instead of quitting Chrome and launching a dedicated text editor? Open a new tab in Chrome to use Google Chrome as a basic text editor and paste the following text into the address bar:

Data: text / HTML, contenteditable < HTML >

In combination with the Favicon bookmarks technique in tip # 5, this trick works well.

7. Google Chrome In Accessible Animated Gifs

Have you downloaded an animated .gif file but don’t know how to access it? Simply drag and drop any animated Gif into Google Chrome’s new tab.

8. Check For Google Chrome Fast Secure

The Search tab allows you to search directly from the Google Chrome address bar inside a website. This tip will speed up the workflow severely and save loads of time. Read this post to see which places help tab to check and learn in what ways I use.

9. Build Extension Google Chrome Keyboard Shortcuts (This Is A Major One)

If you could trigger the Pocket or Pinterest extensions via a google chrome keyboard shortcuts, wouldn’t it be cool? Oh, you can, and it’s both comfortable and, you guessed it, you save time! Open a new tab, enter chrome:/extensions in the address bar, and scroll to the bottom of the page where “keyboard shortcuts” will appear. Open it up and allocate your extensions with keyboard shortcuts.