Apparently, Chrome makes you a habit of opening dozens and dozens of tabs a little easier to manage. Allegedly, Chromium developers are experimenting with different widths of the tabs when the scroll function (also to test) is turned on.
There are two parts to Google’s testing. In Chrome 88, users can enable the scrolling through a flag. This feature makes your tab bar less constricted when you have multiple tabs open at the same time. Firefox and Safari have similar features, so it’s nice to see Chrome follow.
Tab scrolls with tabs shrinking to a large width. Image: Reddit user Leopeva64-2
The page browsing function can be turned on via chrome: // flags. In addition to scrolling through the tab bar with a scroll wheel or trackpad, you can also turn left and right to scroll through your open tabs. It’s just a matter of using what works best for you.
In addition to scrolling tabs, Google also tests different widths in Chrome Canary 90. If the tab is enabled, there are options to shrink tabs to the pinned tab width, medium width, large width, or not shrink at all. If tabs shrink, it’s virtually impossible to distinguish one other than small website icons, so it’s very useful to have different options.
At this point, it’s unclear which option Google is going with, but it’s nice to see new features being tested. Personally, I think the large width option finds the best balance between information density and readability. If you can scroll through your open tabs, you do not need it for some reason. Who knows, maybe Google will offer users several options if the feature is stably available.
Google has previously introduced tab groups and tab searches, but the options are still not the best solution for people who regularly open more than 50 tabs at a time. These new tab features are currently being tested, so there is nothing to know when it will be available, but hopefully it will be launched soon as it can give productivity a big boost.