Chrome for Android Tests Tab Pinning: A Desktop Favorite Comes to Mobile
The era of the “smiley face” tab counter—that mocking icon Chrome displays when you have opened more than 99 tabs—may finally be becoming a bit more manageable. Google appears to be porting one of its most useful desktop features to mobile, giving power users a new way to organize their browsing sessions.
According to a report by Android Authority, the latest build of Chrome for Android is testing the ability to pin tabs, a feature designed to keep essential pages easily accessible and safe from accidental closure.
Bringing Desktop Utility to Mobile
For years, tabbed browsing has been a double-edged sword: it allows for multitasking but often leads to digital hoarding. While Google has previously attempted to mitigate this with features like Tab Groups, the new pinning option offers a cleaner, more permanent solution for high-priority sites.
Just as it functions on the desktop version of the browser, pinning a tab on Android moves it to the very top of your tab grid. This ensures that your most-used sites—whether it’s your email, a project management tool, or a news feed—are always instantly locatable, regardless of how many other random pages you open subsequently.
How It Works
The feature was spotted in Chrome Canary, Google’s experimental release channel used for testing unstable or in-development features. Unlike many experimental tools that require users to dig into the internal chrome://flags menu to activate them, this feature appears to be live by default in the latest Canary build.
Using it is intuitive:
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Open the tab overview grid.
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Long-press on the tab you wish to keep.
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Select the new “Pin tab” option from the context menu.
A Safety Net for Your Data
Beyond simple organization, the pinning feature adds a layer of protection. When a tab is pinned, Android Authority notes that Chrome removes the “X” (close) button from the tab’s card in the grid view.
This subtle interface change effectively prevents users from accidentally swiping away or closing a vital page during a “cleanup” of their browser. To close a pinned tab, users must first long-press it again and select “Unpin tab,” restoring the close button.
While this feature is currently limited to the Canary build, its polished implementation suggests it could arrive on the stable version of Chrome for Android in the near future, offering a superior alternative to traditional bookmarking for active tasks.
