Here’s a workaround for saving Tab Groups on your Chromebook while you wait on Google

My workflow has suffered for far too long from either having way to many tabs or losing a work session I wanted to keep. In the past, there was no way to mitigate against this, but in recent years, Google has implemented something called Tab Groups which allow you to group tabs together, collapse them to save RAM and organize your workspace a bit more.

I’ve fallen in love with Tab Groups, but even though they’ve revolutionized how I operate day-to-day, I still have one problem – I can’t save them for later to clear out space on my screen. Sure, I’ve worked to solve this clutter by installing Toby for Chrome and even Workona, but I guess I just want my Google-owned solution that integrates perfectly and simply into the web browser without the need for an extension.

Luckily, the new Desk saving feature in ChromeOS (this is distinct from the Desk Templates feature) does seem to provide some level of storing and recalling functionality to those who are looking to free up RAM and save things for later. By creating a new virtual desk, opening a bunch of stuff and tossing it into tab groups in Chrome, you can create a sort of workspace or journey to come back to later. The trick is to go into Overview mode on your device and click the “Save desk for later” button just above your open windows.

Once you’ve done that, you can simply visit the “Library” tab at the top of the screen and find your desks that are “Saved for later”. Clicking one to restore it will take you right back to what you were doing, Tab Groups and all – even if everything was previously closed out of!

Of course, there are some limitations to this method. First of all, you can likely only have a certain number of saved desks. Second, and probably most importantly, any time you save a desk, it is specific to that desk, and not to a specific topic you’re researching. We do generally tend to name desks after our life’s segmentation (work, creativity, personal, etc.) but I do wish Google would let you save entire Chrome windows this way so that you can split off Tab Groups based on the topic, name the window and save it for later.

My hope is that the company works toward finally releasing its Tab Group Save feature in Chrome that’s been stuck in the beta and development versions of the operating system. Even then, they simply don’t work. You can currently save a Tab Group to your bookmark bar, but closing out of the browser and re-opening it causes it to disappear entirely, making the entire feature completely useless. I’ve been waiting far too long for this to come to ChromeOS proper, but for now, it looks like I’ll have to continue waiting impatiently.