Google Chrome - 3 simple tips to make your day easier

Optimising business operations doesn’t have to be large-scale changes.  They can be a few very simple changes that make the business day of you and your employees that little bit easier.

Many of us will use Chrome as our default browser and it is highly likely you’ll use this every day of your working week.  It’s also likely, particularly if you work across multiple clients, that you may have dozens of open tabs and generally things feel a little bit disorganised.

We’ve put together our top 3, really simple tips on how Chrome can be better used each day based on our experience of using the browser daily.

Number 1 - Make use of pinning tabs

It is likely that you will have tabs open that you use throughout the day - these could be your email, calendar, linkedin, project management tool etc.  Whilst you need the tab open, you probably don’t need the text in the tab that goes alongside the icon - the icon is enough for you to know what this tab is.  You also don’t want to accidentally close this tab either.

In this case, use the Pin feature - this will change the tab to just the icon, move the tab to the start of all tabs on the left hand side and remove the cross button so it can’t be closed (you can unpin when you don’t need it anymore).  You can pin as many tabs as you want and will help keep your most important tabs in one place and take us less room in the toolbar.

To pin a tab, simply right click on the tab and choose Pin.  

Number 2 - Utilise Groups

Another way to keep your tabs under control is to group them.  This can be particularly useful if you work on multiple clients and want to keep tabs relating to each client separate.  This also means the tabs bar will look much less cluttered.

To use groups, right click on a tab and choose ‘add tab to new group’.  Name the group and you can simply drag other tabs into this folder.  When you need the tabs in the folder simply click on it, when you don’t, they will all be neatly tucked away so you can get on with something else.

Number 3 - Make use of the bookmarks toolbar

Using the toolbar in browsers seems to have gone out of fashion a bit but they can still be very useful to keep things organised and allow you to quickly refer to websites without having to keep tabs open.

To show the bookmarks toolbar, hit Ctrl or Cmd+Shift+B, then drag in your tabs to display them.  You can also utilise a folder structure in the toolbar by right clicking on it and adding folders.

Bonus Number 4

A tip that a lot of people don’t seem to know  is very handy…when you accidentally close a tab and want to get it back, simply hit Ctrl or Cmd+Shift+T and the tab will reappear and reload for you.

There you go, simple tips but ones that can help make your working day that tiny but easier.