- Chrome’s been playing around with menu ordering for opening links in new tabs over the past couple years.
- If you’re used to opening tabs in groups, you may have a preference for where that selection falls in the list.
- Chrome now offers a flag that gives users full control over that order.
Everyone’s got their own opinions when it comes to browser tabs. Some of us are fastidious, keeping tabs organized, and staying on top of closing unneeded ones. Others simply could not be bothered to think twice about them, and just keep opening more and more until Chrome throws up its “:)” counter in surrender. Depending on where you fall on that spectrum, you may have some strong feelings about tab groups — loving them for how they let us sort open sites, or hating how they add chaos to your one big list of tabs. If you’ve recently been finding yourself accidentally opening links in new tab groups when you didn’t mean to — or the opposite — you’ll be pleased to know you’re not going crazy, and there’s a good reason for what’s happening.
When you long-press on a link in Chrome on Android, the first three options you get dictate how the browser opens that target: in a new tab, in a new tab that’s grouped with the current one, or in an incognito tab. But as we were poking around Google’s new Chrome Beta 138 (138.0.7204.35) Android release today, we found ourselves raising an eyebrow at the order of those options: Had Google moved them around?