Browsers with tab groups, and what a group guarantees

Every major desktop browser on a Mac now has some form of tab groups. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi all let a set of tabs be named, collapsed and reopened later. So the short answer to "which browsers have tab groups" is: all of the ones most people would consider. The useful question is what happens to a group when it is closed, deleted or opened on another device, and that is where the five differ.

This guide compares how each browser builds and stores its groups, using the vendors' own help pages as checked on October 18, 2026. It ends with the one limit that all of them share, because that limit is usually the reason a tidy set of groups still feels messy after a week.

The five browsers at a glance

The table below lists the name each vendor uses, how a group is created, and what the official documentation says about closing and syncing. Where a help page does not say something, the cell says so rather than guessing.

Browser	Feature name	How to create	Closing a group	Sync across devices
Chrome	Tab groups	Right-click a tab, "Add tab to group"	Closed groups are saved, not deleted	Yes, when history and tabs sync with a Google Account
Safari	Tab Groups	Sidebar menu, "New Empty Tab Group" or "New Tab Group with [number] Tabs"	Groups live in the sidebar	Not covered on the main group page
Firefox	Tab groups	Drag one tab onto another, pause, drop	Not covered in the release notes	Not covered in the release notes
Edge	Workspaces (with tab groups)	Tab search icon, "Manage workspaces"	Workspaces reopen where work stopped	Yes, with "Workspaces and Tab Groups" sync on
Vivaldi	Tab Stacks	Drag one tab over another, or select tabs and choose "Stack # Selected Tabs"	Not covered on the stack page	Not covered on the stack page

Two patterns stand out. Chrome and Edge treat a group as something that lives in an account and follows the person between devices. Vivaldi and Firefox treat a group mainly as a way to tidy the tab bar of one window. Safari sits between the two, with groups as named sets in the sidebar.

Chrome: closing and deleting are different actions

Chrome's help page on managing tabs is unusually specific about what a group survives (Chrome Help: manage tabs). A group is created by right-clicking a tab and choosing "Add tab to group", then "New group" or an existing one. It can be named, given a color, and collapsed so only its name or a colored circle shows in the tab strip.

The important part is the difference between three actions that look similar in the right-click menu:

• Close group. The page says a closed group is not deleted. It is saved in the bookmarks bar or in the menu, and it can be opened again.
• Delete group. The page warns that deleting removes the group on the current device and on other devices that use the same Google Account.
• Ungroup. The tabs stay open, but the group itself is deleted, again on every device signed in to the same account.

That last point catches people out. Ungrouping feels like a local tidy-up, yet it reaches a phone or a second Mac. Anyone who keeps project groups on a laptop and a desktop should use "Close group" for anything that might be needed again.

Chrome also added vertical tabs. The same help page describes "Show Tabs Vertically", available by right-clicking the blank space in the tab strip or from the View menu on a Mac. In the vertical layout, hovering over a collapsed group shows its full name. For people who keep many groups open at once, vertical tabs make the group names readable instead of truncated.

There is one more setting worth knowing. Under Settings, Appearance, Chrome can automatically pin new tab groups to the bookmarks bar. According to the help page, this also pins new groups created on other devices with the same account, which can fill the bookmarks bar faster than expected.

Safari: groups as named sets in the sidebar

Safari's Tab Groups live in the sidebar rather than in the tab strip (Apple Support: group tabs in Safari on Mac). Apple's guide lists two ways to create one. "New Empty Tab Group" creates a named group, and tabs are then moved in by Control-clicking a tab and choosing "Move to Tab Group", or by dragging. "New Tab Group with [number] Tabs" turns every tab in the current window into a group at once.

Opening a group switches the window to that group's tabs. This is a different model from Chrome. In Chrome, several groups sit side by side in one tab strip. In Safari, a window shows one group at a time, which works well for keeping separate projects apart and less well for comparing pages across two groups.

Two smaller features are documented on the same page. Control-clicking a group in the sidebar and choosing "Show Tab Overview" displays thumbnails of every site in it. Dragging a group from the sidebar into an email message sends its links. Apple's guide also describes topics suggested by Apple Intelligence, which group related tabs automatically, with a note that the feature is not available in all languages or regions.

Firefox, Edge and Vivaldi

Firefox. Tab groups became available to all Firefox users with version 138, according to Mozilla's release notes (Firefox 138 release notes). The notes describe creating a group by dragging one tab onto another, pausing, then dropping it, and moving a whole group along the tab bar by dragging. Mozilla's blog post on the launch adds that groups can be labeled by name or color, and that the team was testing AI-suggested group names that run on the device.

Edge. Microsoft's current approach is Workspaces, which groups related tabs into a named workspace that reopens where work stopped (Microsoft Support: Edge Workspaces). The help page says the new version requires Edge 144 or later and a Microsoft or Azure AD account, and that sync must have "Workspaces and Tab Groups" turned on. It also lists what changed from the earlier version: sharing, collaboration and inviting others are not supported in the new Workspaces, and workspaces are sorted by most recent use.

Vivaldi. Vivaldi calls its groups Tab Stacks (Vivaldi Help: Tab Stacks). A stack is created by dragging one tab over another, by selecting several tabs and choosing "Stack # Selected Tabs", or by grouping all tabs from one website with "Stack (# Tabs by Host)". There is even an option to go through every open tab and stack them all by domain. The drag delay can be adjusted under Settings, Tabs, Tab Features, Tab Stack Options, which helps people who create stacks by accident when reordering tabs.

Groups and memory are separate questions

A common assumption is that collapsing a group frees memory. None of the help pages above says that. Collapsing hides the tabs from the tab strip, but the documentation describes it as a display change, not as closing or suspending the pages inside.

Memory is handled by a different setting. In Chrome, Memory Saver, under Settings, Performance, deactivates tabs that are not in use and reloads them when they are opened again (Chrome Help: customize performance). It offers three levels, from moderate to maximum, and lists exceptions: tabs playing audio or video, tabs sharing the screen, partly filled forms, active downloads and pinned tabs may not be deactivated. That last exception matters for group users. Pinning every important tab to keep it safe also keeps it awake.

A practical way to combine the two features:

1. Turn on Memory Saver at the balanced level.
2. Keep research and reading in groups, and close each group when the task ends.
3. Add the few sites that must never reload, such as a call or a long form, to the "Always keep these sites active" list instead of pinning them.

This keeps groups doing the job of organizing, and leaves memory to the setting built for it.

What a tab group does not separate

Every implementation above organizes tabs. None of them, according to their documentation, changes what the tabs share underneath. Tabs in a group still use the same browser profile as every other tab in that window: the same cookies, the same saved logins and the same signed-in accounts.

This matters most for people who work across several accounts of the same service. A "Client A" group and a "Client B" group can each contain a Gmail tab, but both tabs read the same cookie jar. If Gmail is signed in to one account, both groups show that account unless the person switches inside Gmail. The same applies to Slack workspaces, Notion accounts and most other web apps. The group label looks like a boundary. It is not one.

Browsers do provide real boundaries, just not through groups:

• Profiles. Chrome, Edge and Vivaldi profiles each keep their own cookies and logins. The cost is a separate window per profile, so switching means finding the right window.
• Private windows. These start with no stored cookies, but nothing persists after the window closes, so the person signs in again every time.

For most people, the practical answer is to use groups for what they do well, which is sorting research, reading lists and project pages, and to use a different tool for the boundary between accounts.

Choosing a setup that holds

A tab group setup lasts when each group has a clear job. Three rules make that easier to keep:

1. Groups for temporary work, not for permanent tools. A web app that stays open all day, such as mail, chat or a calendar, gains nothing from being in a group. It clutters the tab strip and gets closed by accident with the group.
2. Close, do not delete, anything that might come back. In Chrome especially, deleting or ungrouping reaches every signed-in device.
3. One browser for groups. Groups do not move between browsers. Importing bookmarks may bring links across, but not the group structure.

For the permanent tools, one option is an app aggregation browser, which keeps each web app in its own window section with its own login. On macOS, one such browser gives each app a separate cookie container, so three Gmail accounts can stay signed in side by side. Its Workspaces page shows how apps are sorted into separate sets, and the Pricing page lists the free tier of one workspace with up to three apps and a paid plan at $7 per month. Comparable products set different limits, which the Compared with Wavebox page lays out.

What to change first

Pick the browser already in use and check how it handles closing a group, since that decides whether groups can be trusted with anything important. Then move the all-day web apps out of the tab strip, either into pinned tabs, a separate profile, or a dedicated tool such as SpaceDeck, so the groups that remain hold only work that will eventually be closed.