How to save Chrome tab groups and get them back later
Close a tab group without losing it, then bring it back next week, on any computer. What Chrome does on its own, and when to save groups as sessions.
· 4 min read
Tab groups are the best thing to happen to Chrome tabs in years: a name, a color, and a row of tabs you can fold away. The hard part comes later, when you want to close a group without losing it and open it again next week. Here are your options, from built-in to more powerful.
Saving a group in Chrome itself
Recent versions of Chrome keep your tab groups for you. Right-click a group’s name in the tab strip to see what yours offers:
- Close or hide the group. The group leaves your tab strip but stays saved.
- Get it back from the saved groups next to your bookmarks bar, or from the tab groups list in Chrome’s menu. The tabs return with the group’s name and color.
- On another computer, saved groups can follow you if you are signed in to Chrome with sync turned on.
The menu names have changed between Chrome versions, so if you don’t see an option, update Chrome first.
Where it falls short
- Saved groups line up next to the bookmarks bar. Past a handful, they are hard to scan.
- It saves groups, not windows. A window with three groups and a few loose tabs doesn’t come back as one thing.
- You find a group by its name. If you called it “Research” four times, good luck.
- Editing a saved group means opening it, changing it, and closing it again.
The old way: bookmark all tabs
Before saved groups, the usual trick was to put a group’s tabs into their own window and use Bookmark all tabs. It still works, but every save becomes a bookmark folder, and the group itself (its name, color and which tabs were in it) is gone. Fine for a one-off, messy as a habit.
Saving tab groups with LinkVolv
LinkVolv saves tabs as sessions on your new tab, next to your bookmarks, and keeps your tab groups intact: their names, colors and the tabs in each. Open a new tab and go to Saved Tabs; the panel beside it lists every window you have open.
Save one group
Hover a tab group in the open-tabs panel and click Save group, or Save group and close to clear it from your window at the same time.
Save the whole window
Save Window saves every tab in the window, groups and loose tabs together, and leaves them open. Freeze saves them and closes the window. Either way, the window becomes one session you can name for the work, like “Lisbon trip planning”.
Get them back
- Restore window opens the whole session in a new window, every group as it was.
- Restore in current window adds the tabs to the window you are in.
- On a single saved group, Restore group or Open group in new window brings back only that one.
Restoring doesn’t delete anything. Open a session as often as you like, and delete it when the work is done.
Can't remember what you called it?
On every computer
Sessions sync to your LinkVolv account on every plan, Free included. Save a window at work and restore it at home, groups and all.
Which should you use?
- A few groups you reopen often: Chrome’s own saved groups are enough.
- Many groups, whole windows, or more than one computer: save them as sessions, where you can see them all, search them and restore a window in one click.
The free plan saves up to 100 tabs across your sessions. Step by step: How to save all tabs in Chrome. Drowning in tabs in general? Read how to stop hoarding tabs without losing any.