The ability to create tab groups is a powerful feature that most browsers support. It allows you to group tabs together, which improves management of tabs significantly.
Tab groups can be collapsed to reduce them to a single icon on the tab bar. Excellent if you need space on the tab bar for other tabs.
Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers support tab groups, but most did not support the saving of groups. Note that saving is different from syncing.
Saving in this context means adding all sites of a tab group to the browser’s bookmarks. Bookmarks are stored locally by default, but if sync is enabled, are synced with other data to other devices.
Note: you may see the save group option in many Chromium-based browsers, not just Google Chrome. The functionality is identical.
Saving tab groups in Google Chrome
You need at least one tab group in Chrome to use the save feature. All that is required is to right-click on the tab group label and select “Save group” from the options.
Chrome adds a new icon to the label to indicate that the group has been saved. The group is saved to the bookmarks bar. One easy way to verify this is by selecting Menu > Bookmarks and lists > Show Bookmarks Bar. You may also use Ctrl-Shift-B to show or hide it.
There is one caveat. The saving option synchronizes data between the tab group and the bookmarks bar. Any change you make to the group in Chrome is automatically synced to the bookmarks folder. If you close the entire tab group, it is deleted from the bookmarks bar.
To go around this, Google has added the option to hide and show tab groups. Hiding removes the tab group from Chrome’s tab bar without deleting the saved bookmark information.
You may then launch the saved tab group again with a click on its listing in the bookmarks bar. It remains saved there when you do so.
Closing Words
The Save Group option syncs all open tabs of a group to the bookmarks bar. This is useful in conjunction with the hide group option, as it allows you to launch tab groups only when they are needed and hide them the rest of the time.
The save option is not a backup feature, on the other hand. Since it syncs all changes, tabs are removed permanently if you close them.