Merge all Chrome windows into one and keep tab groups and pinned tabs

You started the day with one Chrome window. Now there are six. A link opened in a new window, you dragged a tab out to compare two pages, and the rest piled up during the day. You want all those tabs back in one window, with your tab groups and pinned tabs where they were.

Safari has a Merge All Windows command in its Window menu. Chrome doesn’t. You can move tabs between windows by hand, and we’ll start there, but Chrome makes you do it one window at a time. If window management is what’s pushing you away from Chrome, I compared 50 Chrome alternatives.

Tab Reunion is a small Chrome extension that adds the missing command. One click or one shortcut moves the tabs of every window into the one you’re using, in order, with groups and pinned tabs intact.

What you need

Tab Reunion runs in Chrome on macOS, Windows and Linux. After purchasing it, connect GitHub in Polar, accept the private repository invitation, and download the zip from the repository’s Releases page. It isn’t on the Chrome Web Store, so you load it into Chrome yourself. I’ll show you how below.

It asks Chrome for one permission, tabGroups, which it needs to move tab groups. It can’t see the address or the title of your tabs, it never goes online, and there’s no account.

You don’t need anything for the manual method in the next section. It works in any Chrome.

Move tabs by hand with what Chrome has

Chrome gives you two ways to move a tab to another window. You can drag it from one window’s tab strip and drop it into the other window’s tab strip. Or you can right-click it, choose Move tab to another window, and pick the window.

To move many tabs at once, select them first. Click the first tab, hold Shift and click the last one to select the range. To pick tabs one by one, hold Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) while you click them. Then right-click any selected tab and choose Move tabs to another window.

That menu lists your windows by name, which helps when they all look alike. Name the window you want to keep: right-click the empty space next to the New Tab button and choose Name window. Call it “Main” and it shows up as “Main” in the list.

This works fine for two windows. With six, you repeat it in each of the other five: select every tab, open the menu, find “Main”, move. Then you check that your tab groups and pinned tabs came through the way you had them.

Load Tab Reunion into Chrome

Unzip the download and move the folder somewhere it can stay, like your Documents folder. Chrome runs the extension from that folder, so don’t leave it in Downloads where you might clean it up.

1. Open chrome://extensions and turn on Developer mode in the top right corner.
2. Click Load unpacked and pick the folder.
3. Click the puzzle icon in the toolbar and pin Tab Reunion.

You should now see the Tab Reunion button in the toolbar. If you’ve never loaded an extension this way, I explain what Chrome does with that folder in Load and reload the unpacked extension.

Merge every window into the one you’re in

Click into the window you want to keep. That’s the destination: Tab Reunion always merges into the window you’re using.

Click the Tab Reunion button, or press Option+Shift+M on a Mac (Alt+Shift+M on Windows and Linux).

The tabs of every other window move in, and the windows they came from close, since they’re empty now. You should be left with one window.

The tabs keep their order. They arrive window by window, each in the place it had. A tab group comes over whole, with its name and color. Pinned tabs stay pinned: Chrome unpins a tab when it moves to another window, so Tab Reunion remembers which tabs were pinned and pins them again at the end.

Know which windows stay apart

Incognito tabs never mix with your regular ones. Chrome doesn’t run extensions in incognito unless you allow it, from the extension’s Details page in chrome://extensions with Allow in Incognito. If you do, pressing the shortcut in an incognito window merges only the incognito windows.

Popups and installed web apps are left alone too. If you installed Gmail or another site as an app, its window stays its own window after a merge, which is usually what you want.

If something looks wrong

If the shortcut does nothing, open chrome://extensions/shortcuts. Chrome leaves the shortcut empty when another extension already uses it. Set a different one there, or click the toolbar button instead.

If a window didn’t merge, check what it is. Incognito windows, popups and installed web apps stay apart by design. A window from another Chrome profile stays apart too, because Chrome keeps profiles separate and an extension only runs in the profile where you loaded it.

If the button disappeared from the toolbar, click the puzzle icon and pin Tab Reunion again. If chrome://extensions shows an error on its card, you probably moved or deleted the folder. Put it back, or click Load unpacked again and pick its new location.

If you downloaded a new version, copy its files over the old ones in the same folder, then click the reload arrow on the Tab Reunion card in chrome://extensions. An extension loaded this way doesn’t update itself.

Get Tab Reunion

Bring Chrome tabs into the window you are using, keeping their groups, order, and pinned tabs. Full extension source included.

See Tab Reunion → · $20 including tax, with full source code.

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