by Doug Cairns, Instructional Technology Specialist
Do you have websites you visit every day? Perhaps your email or calendar. Did you know that in the Chrome browser, you can "Pin" tabs? Pinning a tab will make that tab persistent even after closing your browser. Pinned tabs are grouped to the left side of the screen for easy access and can be rearranged for your specific needs. To "Pin" a tab, simply right-click it to bring up the context menu. You will find the "Pin" option toward the middle of the choices available. You can also "Un-Pin" tabs following the steps in reverse.
Do you work on multiple projects at once and end up with 10, 20, 30, or more tabs open at once? Chrome has a built-in feature called "Tab Groups." Right-click one of your open tabs and select "Add Tab to New Group." This will open a new menu and allow you to name the group, choose a color, open a new tab in the group, Ungroup the tabs, Close the Group, and move all the tabs in a group to a new window. You can right-click other open tabs and select to move them to your already created groups, or simply drag and drop tabs into the preferred group. Clicking on a group will expand or collapse the group so you can easily work with the sites you need to.
Maybe you don't have enough time to read through an entire article online, but you don't want to lose the tab. Chrome has a "Reading List" feature that will allow you to quickly access sites you want to get back to without leaving the tab open or bookmarking them. Right-click the tab you want to add to your reading list and select "Add Tab to Reading List." You can also click on the star found in the address bar and select "Add Tab to Reading List." To access your reading list, you need to have the bookmarks bar open. To open your bookmarks bar, press "Command+Shift+B" on Mac or Ctrl+Shift+B" on PC or go into Chrome Settings > Appearance and toggle the "Show Bookmarks Bar" switch.
One last tip...
Do you frequently have a website that automatically plays video or audio content (Think news or advertisements on a site)? You can quickly "Mute" an entire site so that all content and pages on the site will be muted. Right-click and select "Mute Site," and all pages and content on that site will be muted. You can reverse this action by right-clicking on the tab and selecting "Unmute Site." You will know if a site is muted if you see a speaker icon in the address bar with a red box.
Chrome has many more useful features. If you would like to learn more about what Chrome can do, check back again next month. I will be walking through the creation of profiles to keep personal content separate from work.