Google Chrome is trying to make its browser more sticky by ensuring that you have access to your tab groups and recently opened tabs across all your devices.
The company is adding tab groups to iOS devices. In the Chrome app, you can long-press on a tab from the tab switcher view to create a new tab group or add it to an existing tab group. You can also assign a color code to a tab group. Chrome first brought tab grouping to desktop in 2020 and later added it to Android. Notably, Safari already has the tab group feature, so Google is aiming for feature parity with this rollout.
Now that iPhones and iPads have tab groups, Google said it will soon have them sync across devices. This is helpful when you are planning a trip or have saved pages for 15-minute dinner recipes on your desktop and want to access them on your phone later in the kitchen.
At times, when you have an open tab on your desktop but haven’t bookmarked it, you might have trouble remembering the URL when opening it on your phone. Google is experimenting with a feature to proactively suggest you currently opened tabs on one of the other devices.
For instance, if you have opened a long article on your desktop, but you had to rush out to catch a cab or a bus, Google will surface that tab through a “continue with this tab” feature.
While both tab group syncing and URL suggestions sound nice, they haven’t rolled out yet. We will have to wait to until the company actually rolls it out to understand if the hand off between devices work well.