Effectively managing multiple tabs is a huge problem we’ve been dealing with ever since BookLink Technologies introduced the feature on its InternetWorks browser in the early 1990s. Over the years, different companies have implemented their own approaches to organizing tabs and help you navigate the Internet without getting bogged down with too much information. Now, Microsoft may no longer support legacy Edge, but it’s going all-in with its new Chromium-based Edge browser. The company has now come up with a new feature called Edge Workspaces to allow users to organize tabs. In this article, we explain how to enable and use the new Edge Workspaces feature.
Organize Tabs Using Edge Workspaces
Enable Edge Workspaces
According to a recent post in Microsoft Tech Community, Workspaces gets vetted feature rollout (A/B testing) on Edge Canary. Therefore, you may not see the feature even if you have the latest version of Edge Canary. Also, there is no feature flag to trigger the feature from edge:// flags. However, after tinkering around for a while, I managed to enable the feature on my Windows 10 laptop running Edge Canary version 91.0.852.0. If you want to try the Edge Workspaces feature, follow the steps below:
1. Start by creating a shortcut for Edge Canary on your desktop. Then right click on the icon and select Properties.
2. Switch to the Shortcut tab and add “–enable-features=msWorkspaces” without the quotes at the end of the target path.
The full target path should look like this:
“C:UsersusernameAppDataLocalMicrosoftEdge SXSApplicationmsedge.exe” –enable-features=msWorkspaces
3. That’s it. Click the “OK” button to save the new target path and open the browser to start using Edge workspaces immediately.
Creating an Edge workspace
1. Once you have successfully enabled Edge Workspaces, you will see a new “T” (cube?) icon next to the vertical tab switcher in the upper left corner by Edge. Click on it to create a new workspace. You can set the name and choose one of the eight color options available for the workspace.
2. To create a second workspace, click on the ‘+’ button in the workspace selector interface.
3. You can then set a new name and color for your new workspace, just like you created the first one. The different name and color combinations will make it easier to organize tabs and move from one workspace to another.
Rename workspace
You can rename the workspaces you have created using the “Edit” button present on the right of a workspace. For example, I renamed the Edge workspace “Test 2” to “Work” as shown in the image below.
Deleting the workspace
You can click on the ‘Delete’ button after pressing the “Edit” button to delete an Edge workspace. As long as you don’t manually delete workspaces using this method, you can access them later, even if you close all tabs or close the browser.
How to Use Edge Workspaces
Workspaces open as separate browser windows in Microsoft Edge. You can see the number of tabs in a workspace just below its name in the workspace switcher interface. To move between workspaces, click the workspace label in the upper left corner and choose another workspace from the workspace selector.
The vertical line next to the workspace name, painted the same color as the label, represents an active workspace. It will be grayed out for all other workspaces in your browser.
Although you cannot move tabs from one workspace to another from the workspace switcher interface, you can drag and drop to move a tab to another workspace after opening them.
In case you were wondering, you can use the new workspace feature alongside tab groups to maximize your tab organization skills. If you haven’t enabled tab groups on Microsoft Edge yet, paste the following text into your address bar, turn on the flag, and restart your browser.
edge://flags/#edge-tab-groups
It should be noted that the tab groups will remain available in the workspace even after restarting Edge. This way you can easily pick up where you left off.
Edge workspaces: first impressions
Microsoft Edge’s new workspaces feature brings much-needed controls to effectively manage tabs in the browser. Combined with tab groups, it can simplify the workflow of users who depend on their browser for their daily work. That said, there are a few quirks with the feature in its current implementation.
Tab management is one of the aspects where the feature could benefit from an improvement. In its current state, you cannot easily switch tabs between workspaces. It would have been handy to extend the workspace switcher and manage tabs across all workspaces from there.
You unable to rearrange Edge workspaces That is. Currently, workspaces are listed in chronological order. It will be nice to see an option to click and drag workspaces to order them by priority or importance. I hope the Edge dev team will make these changes to improve the experience before pushing the feature to stable releases. Overall, workspaces are definitely a welcome addition, especially if you’re someone like me who has multiple tabs open at all times.
And before you ask it’s not similar to what you get on Firefox with multi-account containers, at least in the current version. Sessions are not separated here and I could access the same Google account in different workspaces. For separate sessions, you should look at Edge’s multiple profile features instead. Microsoft even now lets you create a child profile in Edge.
Try Edge workspaces to increase productivity
So that’s all you need to know about Edge’s upcoming workspaces feature. Since the feature is functional and looks almost complete, we might expect Microsoft to bundle it with the next version of Edge. For more such tips, check out our articles on Using Dormant Tabs, Hiding the Title Bar in Vertical Tab Layout, Best Edge Tips, and Best Edge Indicators You Should Be Using.
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