New macOS Monterey Safari Tabs and Tab Groups

macOS Monterey changes how Safari tabs look. The address field is now integrated into the tab and Tab Groups allow you to use lots of tabs without cluttering the top of your browser window.



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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the new Safari Tabs and Tab's Groups features coming in macOS Monterey.
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So one of the most notable new features in macOS Monterey will be how Safari looks. Specifically at the top of the window how the Tabs and the Address field are now merged and there is something new called Tab Groups. This is going to make it a lot easier to manage lots of tabs in Safari.
Let's launch Safari here and you won't see much of a difference when you bring up a new window like this. Here is the Address Field, also the place where you would Search and you could see it's at the top of the window with other buttons as well. The change happens as soon as you open another tab. Let's go first to another webpage and then let's create a new tab. Now I can do that with the Plus button here or Command T. Now you could see the difference. Right here is the first tab and here's the second tab. Notice that the field at the top is inline with the tabs. As a matter of fact it is the Tab. So let's go to another page here. Now you can see I've got two Tabs here. This is the one that's the current page I'm looking at so you can see the field here is larger than the others and it's a little bit of a darker color. But if I want to switch to this tab I just click it and you could see this one becomes larger and this one is pushed off to the side. Notice also the Toolbar here is going to match the contents of the page. So I've got black here whereas here I've got white. Let's create another tab and go to another page. So you can see here now I've got three tabs and the current tab gives me the active address field. I can click here, search for something, type in a new URL just like I could before except it's just not on a separate line above everything else. If I want to switch to another tab just click on the tab and then that becomes the active address field.
Notice also before there was a bunch of different functionality in Buttons here in the Toolbar but now they are all under this one button here. I click there and I have the ability to reload the page, Share, Bookmark, Create a Quick Note which is a new functionality in Monterey, and get the Privacy Report. So those are all under this button right here. Now where is the Close button? Well, where the icon is, if you move your cursor over that you could see it changes to the Close button. Click there to close the Tab.
Now if you keep adding tabs here this will get crowded just like before. But we have a new feature called Tab Groups which will give you some more control over that. So to see Tab Groups bring up the Sidebar by clicking here and here you've got, instead of different sections for the Sidebar, the Sections are now vertical. So you've got Tab Groups, you've got Received Links, you've got Collected Links like Bookmarks and Reading List. Now Tab Groups are where things get interesting. Here at the top I see the non-grouped tabs, so the tabs I'm using right now. If I want to change that to a group I can Control click on it, right click with a mouse, two-finger click on a trackpad, and select New Tab Group with three tabs. I could also go to File and then New Tab Group with Three Tabs. Then this will create a new Tab Group here and let's call this Apple and I can go to this Tab Group anytime I want. I've got other Tab Groups here. I've got one here called News. Let's click on that and you could see it's switches to Tabs that are in a separate group. I've got three tabs here and a fourth one open but I haven't gone anywhere yet. So I can easily switch between these two tabs and you could see how quick it is. So it's like you've got all of those tabs open but you're only going to see the ones in that current group. It makes it much cleaner at the top of the screen.
You could also create a new Tab Group by clicking here and select New Empty Tab Group. Then you can name it something and you could see it's blank. So now I can start adding new tabs here. So let's go to some search engines and I'll do Command T for a new tab, and a new one and now these are in this Tab Group. So I can move between them pretty easily. You can see I still have this non-group to set here which just has this one window in it. If I want to create a bunch of extra tabs in here, I'll just create a bunch of Start Page Tabs, you could see that that still stays there. So I can switch to these groups and then I've got this non-group set of tabs.
Now you still have Tab Overview. So you can see here if I click here it gives me an overview of those tabs. Or I can switch to another group and then click there and it gives me an overview of those tabs. You've got a nice bit Plus button here to add a new tab to this group. Moving tabs around works with Drag and Drop. I can go in here and click on this tab and drag it around. You can see I have previews here for other tabs if I just hover over the tab and wait. I can also Control click on a tab and do all the things I did before. I can duplicate it. I can Close it. I can Close all the other tabs except this one. Then you even have the ability to Close All the tabs to the right or move the tab to a new window or move the tab to a new group. So you can move tabs between groups. Then you can even arrange the Tabs by title alphabetically or the website URL alphabetically. Notice you can drag a tab not only around at the top here but I could bring it all the way over and drop it into another group. There are also features if you Control click on a Tab Group here. You can see I can Copy all the links to a little list. I can rename the group. Delete it. I can go to the Tab Overview or jump to any individual tab. So, for instance, I could do this and it jumps to that individual tab. If I Control click here I can go to an individual tab here. It's going to switch to that Tab Group and take me directly to that tab.
Now when you Search you still get results that include Tabs in other groups. So, for instance, I'll search for MacMost here. You can see Switched to Tab. If I use that it's going to switch to that Tab Group showing that Tab.
So there is one new Preference that you've got. It's similar to something that was there before. It works a little differently. If I'm in this Tab Group and I create a bunch of new tabs eventually you could see I get just the icons. There's not enough room for the name. But I can force it to show the name by going to Preferences, and under Tabs here I can turn off Automatically Collapse Tab Titles and Icons. Now you could see as soon as I make a change there that the names appear here. So turning that Off or rather ON you could see compresses into icons. But you could still use Command and then Number to switch between the Tabs within the group. You could still have the other options having to do with new tabs including when Pages are open in a new tab, either Never, Automatically, or Always.
Now note that there are not a lot of buttons here in the Toolbar anymore. But you can customize the Toolbar just as before. So if I go to View and then Customize Toolbar you can see there's a lot I can add back in here. So, for instance, if I wanted to add the Tabs Overview as a button I could add it in here. I could also put it on this side over here. I could add Bookmarks back in. I could add Home back in. So you still have the ability to Customize things just by default. The default group here is going to keep things pretty simple.
So that's a general overview of how Safari now works with Tabs and Tab Groups. This seems to be a pretty complete feature here in the first beta so I don't expect there to be many changes. Everything seems to work really smoothly. I can tell you after playing around with this in macOS Monterey when I go back to macOS Big Sur I miss these Tab Groups. So I think a lot of people are really going to like these once they give them a try.
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