Chrome reportedly makes your habit of managing dozens and dozens of tabs a little easier. Chromium developers are reportedly experimenting with different widths of tabs when the tab scrolling feature is enabled (including during testing).
Google testing consists of two parts. In Chrome 88, users can enable tab scrolling via a flag. This feature keeps your tab bar from looking as squashed when you have multiple tabs open at once. Firefox and Safari have similar features, so it’s good to see Chrome following suit.
Browse tabs with tabs shrunk to a large width. Image: Reddit user Leopeva64-2
The tab browsing feature can be enabled via chrome: // flagsIn addition to swiping through the tab bar with a scroll wheel or trackpad, you can also enable the left and right buttons to scroll through your open tabs. It’s just a matter of using whatever works best for you.
In addition to scrollable tabs, Google also tests different widths in Chrome Canary 90. With tab scrolling enabled, there are options to shrink tabs to pinned tabs, medium width, large width, or none at all. When tabs get smaller, it’s next to impossible to tell them apart, except for tiny website icons, so it’s really helpful to have several options.
At this point, it’s unclear which option Google will choose, but it’s good to see new features being tested. Personally, I think the wide width option offers the best balance between information density and readability. If you can scroll through your open tabs, you don’t really need to shrink them for any reason. Who knows, maybe Google will offer users multiple options when the feature becomes available in a stable build.
Google previously introduced tab groups and tab search, but those options are still not the best solution for people who regularly have more than 50 tabs open at a time. These new tab features are currently being tested so there is no telling when they will be available, but hopefully they will be launched soon as they can give productivity a big boost.