What you need to know
- Google is looking to harmonize tab groups with a more extensive redesign of Chrome on Android.
- Tabs in the open tab group are currently displayed at the bottom of the screen.
- With the design in question, these would be moved to a floating bar above the tabs button.
Google's engineers are currently testing a new UI for the recently released tab grouping feature for Chrome on Android (via 9to5Google. In the current UI, the tabs in your open tab group are shown in a bar at the bottom of the screen. However, with the 'Duet' redesign, Google plans on moving most of the browser's controls — minus the Omnibar — to the bottom of the screen, leading to an obvious conflict.
As a result, the company is moving the tab groups UI to a floating box above the tabs button. You can access it by long-pressing the tabs button. The floating strip also includes a downward-facing arrow that lets you hide it, alongside a + button to add new tabs to the current groups. As usual, you can switch between different tabs and tab groups by simply using the tab switcher we all know and love.
The new UI is currently experimental, and can only be enabled if you're on the Dev or Canary builds for Chrome. If you have either of those, you can try the new look for yourself by inputting 'chrome://flags' into the URL bar and searching for the 'Duet-TabStrip Integration' flag. You may also need to enable the 'Chrome Duet' flag to see the redesign mentioned above.
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