Tab groups

TheAllegedGenius This is possible with tree tabs in vertical tab mode.

If you're talking about spaces, that is already a planned feature.

TheAllegedGenius I understand I guess what I am asking is what is the difference between switching tab groups and windows of tabs? And windows have the advantage of being able to see multiple "tab group" at the same time.

Vlad Tab groups are conserved when closing the entire application. Windows are not and when you close them they are gone.

Fortrikka Conserved in what way? Windows get restored when you repoen the app.

The difference is only having to manage a single window vs multiple. In my opinion/experience, it's better UX to switch tab groups in the current window than find the tab in multiple windows.

Jerdle i agree. Tab groups are very handy, because they keep your windows clean. I hate it when i have more than 4 windows open at a time, so the feature was the thing that solidified my choice to switch to opera from chrome a few years ago.

Is the scenario described below a valid use case? If so, I would also be in favor of this feature.
I'm working on a project in a window with 10 tabs. I'd like to be able to save the tabs in that window as a tab group - including each tab's history and maybe even the window's history (to be able to reopen closed tabs later) - so I can close the window and come back to it (restore the tab group in a new window again) in a few days when I want to continue working on the project.

There are, however, various Chrome or Firefox extensions such as https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session-buddy/edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko?hl=en that offer similar functionality. I just installed Tab Session Manager from the Chrome Web Store https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-session-manager/iaiomicjabeggjcfkbimgmglanimpnae/ and it seems to be working fine.

Jerdle I think what you are saying is this:

• Windows currently do not have a label
• You can not switch to a window based on such label (via a dropdown for example)

Fixing these two could remove all the benefits of having separate tab groups?

Vlad Thank you, I did not know this. Tab groups as implemented in Safari do not seem to be a desirable solution. Using an extension might be a better way to save tabs/windows. It would be convenient, however, to be able to sync saved tabs/windows with the iOS app. Not sure how this could be implemented when using third-party extensions.

Here are a few of my use-cases/favorite features for tab groups.

• I essentially treat my tab groups (in Safari/Chrome shudder) as bookmark suites. It's very nice to already have the webpages in a deterministic order, I can just navigate to my Jira tab group, and my team's scrum board is always in the first tab. Tab groups help keep me organized, and helps with muscle memory when using the browser.
• I really like being able to search through tab groups purely through keyboard shortcuts. This is something I believe Chrome supports, however Safari doesn't inherently (though, I believe you can search from the "tab group mission control" kind of page).
• One thing Safari has however, that Chrome doesn't, is if I try to open a webpage again, it will actually redirect me to the tab group. This might honestly be a bug rather than a feature, but I find it kind of nifty, and avoids me from opening the same tab redundantly and sucking up a ton of memory (very easy to do when rabbit-holing on something).

We should have v1 of this concept ready for the next beta update.

Vlad These windows have to be opened though which may consume system resources. Will it be possible to have these saved without the need to have it open?

Thanks

@Vlad I'd like to make another case for the safari style tab groups.
Named Windows in Orion are pretty cool but they are just windows which are temporary, there is no sense of persistence. Yes tab groups don't actually save the state of the tabs but if you click on the red x button (safari) on a window that has a specific tab group opened it will close the window but will keep the tab group! in the named windows implementation (in Orion) if you close a window it's gone (I know you can re open it but that's not the point).

in other words tab group are mental separation of different tabs. Let's say you have a tab group named "shoes" where you have a bunch of open tabs to research a new pair of shoes you want to buy. At some point you want to go back to work and you switch to the "work" tab group. What happens is that "shoes" group it totally hidden, it's not minimised nor is it in still visible, it's basically tucked in until maybe in 3 days you have some free time to continue where you left off. same for the "work" tab group after work you might have some loose ends and you don't wanna loose those tabs but at the same time you don't to be bother by work during your non working hours.

This is also very different from bookmarks also because you maybe a lot of these tabs only matter for a short period of time while you doing the shoes research for example after which they serve no purpose and you can delete the tab group.

finally Safari has this feature where you can take create a tab group out of some tabs. This is important because besides the tab groups you can also just use safari normally but what if you open a fresh safari window start a new research or topic and then decide that you'll pause for now and continue later, all you have to do is to create a new tab group from the currently open tabs, give it a name and bam your progress is saved for later

I hope this use case makes sense