Table of Contents
Table of Contents
A dreadful life-saver
It has raised hell
A bitter choice, because others suck
In September last year, Google announced a new feature that would let users sync their grouped tabs across mobile and desktop. It seems the company quietly started rolling it out in a phased manner.
I noticed the new synced tab group feature on my OnePlus 13 earlier today, after the Chrome v133 update was installed on February 12, as per the Google Play logs.
Recommended Videos
But according to Reddit posts, this feature had started appearing to users as far back as four months ago. Another post from two months ago mentions the arrival of this feature with a beautiful question for the Google team:
“Whose dumb idea is this?”
Related
-
You can now use an external webcam with Microsoft Teams on your iPad. Here’s how
-
Your Google Chrome app is getting 5 helpful new features
-
Have an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch? You need to update it right now
A dreadful life-saver
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
When you open Chrome on mobile and launch the tab switcher, there’s now a new 2×2 icon at the top. When you tap on it, a list of grouped tabs appear, with the same color code that you picked while creating them on mobile or desktop.
Notbaly, the ability to create tab groups landed on the iOS version, as well. As per the log notes (for v133.0.6943.33) that was released two weeks ago, the iPhone version of Chrome finally enabled tab grouping, complete with sync support for mobile-desktop workflow.
I usually start my work on mobile. For news gathering via a curated feed, social media accounts, and official forums, it’s easier to get a quick look on a phone while sipping coffee with an ungodly concentration of caffeine.
I quite like this two-column approach for synced tab groups. Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
As I come across newsworthy stuff, I neatly slot them across dated groups such as science, AI, computing, space, and more. Once the teams come online, I simply open the right tab group and share the material.
I do this for my recreational interests, as well. Saving up articles for reading later, videos, memes, and more such stuff. With the cross-device sync, it has become much easier to access, and manage, those tabs directly on a larger screen.
It’s a fantastic way for getting some work, or work planning, done on the go. But not without its fair share of quirks. When I first enabled it — using a Chrome flag — on my iPad Pro and relaunched the browser, all my synced tabs automatically opened in the same windows.
All 82 of them in an ungrouped fashion.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Of course, it was overwhelming, and it’s not something that should ideally happen. I initially grouped them all to get the look you see above, but eventually closed all those tabs because it was taking too many resources in the background.
It has raised hell
Synced tab groups sound like a productivity dream, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, it seems. The biggest conundrum is keeping the mobile (aka fun and casual) part of browsing separate from the work-related stuff on your desktop.
If you’re someone whose work depends on Chrome tabs, the list of synced tabs pulled from mobile and desktop quickly gets a little much. This is how one user described it:
“dumbes (sic) thing I saw from Google”
“Its really annoying,” wrote another frustrated Chrome users.
When was the last time you handled a feature via Chrome flags? Exactly! Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
And here’s the worst part. The underlying functionality appears to be broken. Multiple reports mention lost tab groups if one decides to disable the tab syncing system. On the official Google Chrome Help forum, multiple users have also detailed how synced tabs groups just randomly disappeared.
Another frustrated user writes how tabs automatically land on a blank page after every restart. One report mentions how the tabs go back to the previous page after each fresh launch. Then we have reports of duplicate tab groups. There are a healthy few users struggling to disable tab group syncing, and for valid reasons. Here’s an account from another community forum member:
“Now I have to go and spend lots of time recreating all my tab groups and again and have probably lost some of my links because the history feature only saves so many tab groupings. Abismal!!!!!”
App Store says this feature is ready for my iPad. It was hidden not in Chrome, but elsewhere. Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
One report mentions that despite customizing the sync behavior to keep the mobile and desktop tabs from appearing under a unified dashboard, they still see the synced tab groups across all their devices. It seems the respite comes not from in-app settings, but by disabling a Chrome flag, a route that is not directly available in the Settings section.
I don’t know many people around me who are familiar with the concept of using Chrome flags to enable or disable certain features. For them, it would simply be a futile attempt desperately digging through the app’s Settings page, and eventually ending up frustrated.
Oh, and did I mention synced tabs are an absolute resource hog? And when they’re not, they are simply a blank mess. This is the current status of my synced tabs on the iPad Pro. I can see the color code and subject, but have no idea about anything else.
Look at this sheer chaos from synced tab groups on my iPad Pro. Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Here is another downright stupid part. The iPhone version of Chrome is ready for tab groups and has it enabled as soon as the updated version is installed. On the iPad Pro, I had to check a Chrome flag to get it working. Both are running v133 stable build, by the way.
Thanks, Google!
A bitter choice, because others suck
Alright, let me tell you an anecdote from merely two days ago. While testing a Dell laptop with a Snapdragon X Elite processor, I noticed that Chrome suddenly decided to give me hell. Random crashes, blank screen, and frozen UI? You know, the whole shebang.
I switched to Edge, and had a less-frustrating time, though not entirely fuss-free. As usual, I opened a few dozen tabs across two windows, and slotted them across with beautiful color-coded groups.
Out of nowhere, my laptop charger decided to stop working and I had to shift to my iPad Pro to continue my work. I launched Edge on my tablet, only to realize I can merely sync tabs across mobile and desktop, but not tab groups.
Collections act somewhat like groups, but Edge has a separate tab groups feature, too. Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Racing to meet deadlines (you know how it is in a newsroom), I frantically searched the Microsoft community forum and Reddit, and realized that Edge doesn’t allow you to sync tab groups between mobile and desktop by default. The only option left for me was to open the synced tab history from my laptop and then restore the requisite tabs on my iPad Pro.
But thanks to my career in tech reporting, I know that Edge is based on the Chromium engine, which is why I could find an analogous flag for tab group syncing in Edge, just the way it is served in Chrome. My hunch was right. After a quick search, I found the “Enable Tab Groups on iPad” flag for Edge.
Not many smartphone users are aware of using flags to enable or disable certain features. Plus, it’s an experimental system, which means inexplicable bugs and performance issues are commonplace. For most Edge users in my place, they would be otherwise left with a frustrating back-and-forth journey of checking out the synced tabs, finding the right one after scrolling a long list, and opening them one by one.
It’s a chore to recover tabs from a collection in Edge. Image used with permission by copyright holder
I later realized you can create Collections in Edge, and that they sync on mobile. It was a relief. But thanks in no part to Apple’s WebKit mandate that ruins every mobile browser and the terrible cursor-response system in iPadOS, my relief with Edge was barely a stop-gap solution.
I had to manually add each tab on my laptop to a new collection and wait for them to sync, before I could carry my work over to the iPad Pro. It was a hard-earned victory, but I returned to work with an added dose of rage directed at Apple and Microsoft.
At the end of the day, I am left with Chrome, with all its polish and vices.
Editors’ Recommendations
-
iOS 18.2 is rolling out now with a ton of new Apple Intelligence features
-
The YouTube mobile app is getting a small redesign. Here’s what’s changing
-
I used AR glasses with Android tablets and iPads. Only one was good
-
The Pixel 7’s best camera trick is coming to the iPhone and all Android phones
-
Google Chrome on iOS gets 6 new features to take on Safari
