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Google Chrome tips: Manage your tabs like a pro

Got too many tabs open in Google Chrome? Yeah, you're not alone. Same here. Fortunately, the Google Chrome engineers have made tools available to help you wrangle tab overload.

Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Senior Contributing Editor April 27, 2019 at 2:47 a.m. PT

Got too many tabs open in Google Chrome? Yeah, you're not alone. Same here. Right now I have several dozen open in a single window. Fortunately, the browser comes with tools to help you deal with tab overload.

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Right click on a tab and look at the options you have available. There are some powerful features on offer here:

Reload
Duplicate
Pin Tab
Mute Site
Close Tab
Close Other Tabs
Close Tabs to the Right

The more you learn to make use of these features, the easier it is to control tab overload. The three I find the most useful are Duplicate, Pin Tab, and Mute Site. On the other side of the usefulness spectrum, I don't think I've ever used Close Tabs to the Right.

Have you ever accidentally closed Google Chrome and have it shut down all your tabs? There's a way to get it to reload all the tabs that you previously had open. To do this go to Settings (the easiest way to do this is to type chrome://settings/ into the address bar and hit ENTER), then scroll down to On start-up and select Continue where you left off.

Didn't know that Google Chrome had its own Task Manager? It sure does! You can access it by clicking on the three vertical dots at the top-right of the menu bar, going down to More Tools and then select Task Manager. This is a powerful tool that you can use to see which tabs are using the most system resources, and close them if you want.

Very powerful.

Give Google Chrome a speed boost

Did you know that you can select multiple tabs in Google Chrome? To do this hold down CTRL in Windows or Command in Mac, and then click on the tabs you want to pick out of the ocean of tabs you have open.

Why do this? Well, after having selected multiple tabs, you can do things like drag them out into a new window, or right-click on them and close them, or mute them if they are emitting an annoying noise.

Accidentally closed a tab that you needed? You can resurrect it by hitting Ctrl-Shift-T on Windows or Command-Shift-T on Mac.