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How to pin tabs in Chrome

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A row of small pinned tab icons at the left of a browser tab strip

In short: Right-click the tab and select Pin. Pinned tabs get smaller and only show the site's icon.[1] To undo it, right-click and select Unpin.[1]

Mail, calendar, the chat you answer all day. Some tabs never close. Pinning tucks them to the left, out of the way of everything else.

Pin or unpin a tab

Pinned tabs are smaller and only show the site's icon.[1] To reorder them, drag them along the top of the window.[1]

Pin several tabs at once

  1. Hold Ctrl and select each tab, or select the first one, hold Shift and select the last.[1]
  2. Right-click any highlighted tab and choose Pin.[1]

The same right-click menu can group, move, mute or close them all. See how to select multiple tabs.

When pinning helps, and when it doesn't

A Carnegie Mellon study found 41.7% of tabs are pages people return to often.[2] Those are the ones to pin. But the researchers note the limit: a pinned tab shrinks to an icon, which works for a well-known app, not for ten documents that share the same icon.[2]

For many similar pages, readable titles beat icons. Try vertical tabs, which show full page titles.[1]

Close tabs without fear. Keeptab saves your tabs in one click, backs them up every hour and notes your open tabs every 5 minutes. Free for Chrome.

Add to Chrome — it's free

For the tabs that don't deserve a pin

Pin the five you use all day. For the rest, Keeptab, our free Chrome extension, saves them as a list in one click, either a whole window or just the tabs to the left or right.[3] Find them later by word, date or site.[3]

FAQ

How do I pin a tab in Chrome?

Right-click the tab and select Pin. The tab gets smaller and only shows the site's icon.

How do I unpin a tab in Chrome?

Right-click the pinned tab and select Unpin.

Can I pin several tabs at once?

Yes. Hold Ctrl or Shift to highlight several tabs, then right-click one of them and select Pin.

Sources

  1. Google Chrome Help. Manage tabs in Chrome. https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2391819?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop
  2. Carnegie Mellon University. Chang et al., “When the Tab Comes Due: Challenges in the Cost Structure of Browser Tab Usage”, CHI 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445585
  3. Keeptab. The OneTab alternative to stop losing your tabs. https://keep-tab.com/onetab-alternative

Close tabs without fear

Keeptab saves your tabs in one click, backs them up every hour and notes your open tabs every 5 minutes. Free for Chrome.

Add to Chrome — it's free

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