While Google Chrome is among the top browsers for Android, it doesn’t yet include the full suite of features you will find in the desktop version. However, we’ve seen Chrome for Android bridging that gap over the past few years, with a leak last month detailing the arrival of a dedicated bookmarks bar for tablets and other large-screen Android devices.
Similarly, a report in November shed light on the tab pinning feature coming to Chrome for Android. While the feature was only available in Chrome Canary and the stable version (with a feature flag), it wasn’t widely available to all users. Well, that’s changing now with Google bringing tab pinning to more users.
This addition comes as part of the recent Chrome version 144 release, according to 9to5Google. The mechanism remains exactly the same as the November leak suggested: requiring users to long-press an open tab and tap pin/unpin from the menu.
It’s been a long time coming
Chrome also gets a persistent carousel of pinned tabs at the top that appears as you scroll to the bottom of the grid (fourth image above). Tapping any of these pinned items on the carousel immediately takes you to that specific tab, thus saving you the trouble of scrolling to that specific tab. Each pinned tab in this carousel also contains the page name, making it easy to discern between multiple pinned tabs in the carousel.
While the desktop version of Chrome has offered tab pinning for a while now, it’s great to see the Android counterpart following suit. Of course, Chrome’s versatility also means you can disable tab pinning entirely or even modify its behavior using the feature flag. Type chrome://flags in the address bar, search for “Android pinned tabs,” and choose your preferred option. It should be set to Default if you’re accessing it for the first time.
In my brief time using pinned tabs in Chrome for Android, I’ve found that swiping back while viewing a pinned tab effectively closes that tab. Ideally, users would prefer a warning pop-up to alert them before inadvertently closing a pinned tab.
There’s no way to accidentally unpin a tab, though, as the standard ‘x’ to close a tab is replaced by a pin in this scenario. Furthermore, pinned tabs will also be immune to the swipe-to-close gesture in Chrome for Android.
While I personally don’t like keeping several tabs open on my Android phone, there’s no doubt that pinned tabs could be useful for some users. And for those that don’t need it or think it’s getting in the way, there’s a relatively simple way to disable it, as we touched on above.
