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How to use Safari Tab Groups to take control of your browser tabs

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How to get organized with Safari Tab Groups
Use Safari Tab Groups to arrange all those browser tabs you have open..
Photo: Cult of Mac

Keeping large numbers of browser tabs open is such a common habit that Apple created a system to organize them. Safari Tab Groups let you put open tabs into logical collections so you can more easily work with them. And the same groups are available across all your Apple devices.

The system gets a little complicated. But here’s how to get started with Safari Tab Groups.

Hands on: Safari in iPadOS 15 forces tabs on everyone

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Hands On: Safari in iPadOS 15 forces tabs on everyone
iPad users will find browser tabs unavoidable in the version of Safari in iPadOS 15.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

The redesigned Safari web browser in iPadOS 15 makes tabs an inescapable part of browsing. The new system is more space efficient, but forces many people to change the way they use their iPad.

I work in Safari on iPad all day every day, so I used the first iPadOS 15 beta to test the modifications that are coming. Here’s what I like. And what I don’t.

Too many Chrome tabs open? Tame browser chaos with tab groups.

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Use Google Chrome Tab Groups to declutter your browser.
If you've got too many tabs open in Chrome, you can declutter things with the new Tab Groups feature.
Photo: Luca Bravo/Unsplash CC

Hey there, all you tab hoarders: Google Chrome just gave you a handy tool to bring some order to the nightmare lurking at the top of your web browser. A new Chrome feature lets you group tabs together with custom names to tame the chaos.

Unfortunately, it’s not completely obvious how to get in on the tab-grouping action. Here’s how to make it work for you.

How to force Safari to open tabs the way it should

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paper notebook with tabs
Tabs, just like those that Safari now messes up.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

At some point, fairly recently, Safari started opening new tabs to the right of the currently open tab, instead of opening them at the end of the tab bar, as nature intended. This means that you have to search for the newly opened tab, instead of just knowing exactly where it is. I can see the point of opening tabs next to the current one, but I don’t like it.

Happily, there’s a way to revert Safari’s behavior to the good old way — the way my grandmother, and her grandmother before her, dealt with their tabs. It’s a simple option inside Safari’s debug menu. Wait? Debug menu?

How to save all open tabs to a folder in iOS 13 Safari

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Safari's new download manager in iOS 13.
Safari is full of new tricks in iPadOS.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

If you currently use a third-party bookmark manager, you might be able to ditch it when you upgrade your iPhone or iPad to iOS 13. The main new feature is that you can now save all your open tabs into a bookmark folder, then reopen all the links in that folder with one tap. But that’s not all. Thanks to iPadOS’ new contextual menus, the built-in bookmarks got way easier to use.

A radical Safari tabs trick that’s hard to explain in the title

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A desert, not unlike the Mojave, where you could go on safari.
I’m getting desperate for Safari-related images for these how-to posts.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

This tip is exhibit A in the case for Apple being really, really good at hiding features. I imagine if you went around to Apple’s house for dinner, and the company asked you to set the table, you’d have some real trouble finding the cutlery. Maybe you’d open the cutlery drawer and see only the spoons. Then you’d open the drawer below, expecting that Apple had just set things out differently, as usual.

But in that second drawer you’d find nothing but fruit. WTF Apple? And then you’d notice that the top drawer is a little thicker than it appears when open. You try the top drawer again. This time you see that if you press down on one of the wooden spoons, the others move aside — animated a little too slowly — to reveal the knives and spoons. But where the hell are the forks?

Back to today’s tip. It’s a combination of two tricks you may already know:

  • Search the open Safari tabs on your iPhone.
  • Long-press the tabs button to close all tabs.

What do you think today’s tip might be?

How to close all Safari tabs at once on iPhone and iPad

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Does your Safari tab view looked like an overstuffed Rolodex? We can totally help.
Does your Safari tab view looked like an overstuffed Rolodex? We can totally help.
Photo: Sarah Gerke/Flickr CC

You probably know the trick for closing lots of tabs in Safari on your iPhone. You enter the tab overview aka Rolodex view, and then swipe those tabs off the screen one by one. It’s even kind of fun, but if you have lots and lots of tabs open, then the fun wears off pretty fast. So you’ll be happy to hear that there is a better way. A much better way, in fact, that lets you close all your open tabs with one tap.

Pro Tip: Pin Safari’s tabs so you can find them faster

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pin safari tabs
Apple seemingly has a new relationship with Tencent.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Pro Tip Cult of Mac bugEver lost a tab in Safari? You have like a million of the things open, and you end up scrubbing a two-finger trackpad swirl over the entire tab bar, shifting those things around so that you can read their labels, and you still can’t track down the Cult of Mac website in there. Well here’s good news: you can just pin that tab to the edge of the tab bar, so you’ll never lose it again.