Tab Groups Focus

About

Tab Groups Focus makes Chrome's built-in Tab Groups work the way they should — like workspaces. Switch to a group and everything else gets out of the way. All features work automatically out of the box, with optional toggles if you want to customize.

**Feature 1: Auto-Collapse**

When you switch to a tab that belongs to a group, every other group in that window collapses automatically. Only your active group stays expanded.

This also works when you click an ungrouped tab — all groups collapse, giving you a completely clean tab bar.

Each window is independent. Switching groups in one window has no effect on your other windows.

**Feature 2: Auto-Focus**

When you click a collapsed group's label to expand it, the extension automatically activates a tab in that group. You can choose the behavior in the popup settings:

— Last used tab (default): Restores the tab you were last viewing in that group. If you haven't visited the group yet (or your last tab was closed), it falls back to the first tab.
— Always first tab: Always activates the leftmost tab (lowest index position) in the group.

Without this extension, Chrome would just expand the group visually but leave you on whatever tab you were previously viewing — requiring an extra click to actually switch context.

Combined with Auto-Collapse, this means a single click on any group label is all it takes: the group expands, your chosen tab activates, and everything else collapses.

**Feature 3: Smart Ungrouping**

When you open a link from inside a grouped tab (Ctrl+click, middle-click, or any action that spawns a new tab), Chrome normally auto-assigns the new tab to the same group as the parent tab. Over time, this silently inflates your groups with tabs you never intended to organize there.

Tab Groups Focus detects these auto-inherited tabs and removes them from the group, letting them exist as standalone ungrouped tabs instead. Your groups stay exactly as you organized them.

Important: this only affects tabs that Chrome auto-groups because they were spawned from a grouped tab. If you manually drag a tab into a group, that is never undone. The extension respects your intentional grouping decisions.

**Customizable:**

All three features are enabled by default. Click the extension icon in your toolbar to toggle any feature on or off. Auto-Focus also lets you choose between restoring your last used tab or always opening the first tab. Your preferences are saved locally and persist across browser restarts.

**What it doesn't do:**

Tab Groups Focus has no data collection and no account required. It has a simple popup for toggling features, but works entirely in the background using Chrome's tabGroups API. Toggle your preferences once and forget about it.

**Lightweight and private:**

• Zero data collection — no browsing history, no analytics, no tracking
• No network requests — works 100% offline
• No content scripts — never reads or modifies your web pages
• Minimal permissions — uses only the tabs and tabGroups APIs
• Minimal local storage — only saves your three toggle preferences, nothing else

Built for anyone who uses Chrome Tab Groups and wants them to behave more like focused workspaces.

Changelog:
v1.2.0 — Auto-focus now remembers your last active tab per group, with option to always use first tab instead
v1.1.0 — Added per-feature toggle controls (click the extension icon)
v1.0.0 — Initial release