Managing multiple tabs efficiently is a big challenge we’ve dealt with since BookLink Technologies introduced this feature in the InternetWorks browser in the early 1990’s. Over the years, different companies have implemented their own approaches to organizing tabs and helping you surf the web without being overwhelmed with too much information. Now Microsoft may no longer support the Edge legacy, but all is well with the new Chromium-based Edge browser. The company has now developed 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.
Editing Tabs Using Edge Workspaces
Enable Edge Workspaces
by last post On the Microsoft Tech Community, Workspaces is receiving a controlled feature rollout (A/B testing) in Edge Canary. As a result, you may not see the feature even if you have the latest Edge Canary build. Also, there is no feature flag to trigger the feature from edge://flags. However, after struggling for a while, I was able to enable this feature on my Windows 10 laptop running Edge Canary version 91.0.852.0. If you’re interested in trying the Edge Workspaces feature, follow these steps:
1. First create a shortcut for Edge Canary on your desktop. Then right click on the icon and Select Features.
2. Switch to the Shortcut tab and add “–enable-features=msWorkspaces” without quotes at the end of the target path.
The full target path should look like this:
"C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge SXS\Application\msedge.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 right away.
Creating an Edge Workspace
1. After successfully enabling Edge workspaces, You will see a new ‘T’ shaped icon (cube?) next to the vertical tab switcher in the upper left corner Edge’s. Click on it to create a new workspace. You can set the name for the workspace and choose one of the eight available color options.
2nd. Click the ‘+’ button to create a second workspace in the workspace switcher interface.
3. You can then set a new name and color for your new workspace, just as you created the first one. Different combinations of names and colors will make it easy to organize tabs and move from one workspace to another.
Rename Workspace
You can rename workspaces you create using the ‘Edit’ button to the right of a workspace. For example, I renamed the Edge workspace from ‘Test 2’ to ‘Work’ as shown in the image below.
Deleting the Workspace
You can do Click the ‘Remove’ button After pressing the ‘Edit’ button to delete an Edge workspace. Unless you manually remove 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 switch between workspaces, click the workspace label in the upper left corner and select another workspace from the workspace switcher.
The vertical line next to the workspace name, painted in 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, can drag and drop to move a tab to another workspace after opening.
If you’re wondering, you can use the new workspace feature alongside the tab groups to maximize your tab editing skills. If you haven’t enabled tab groups in Microsoft Edge yet, paste the text below into your address bar, enable the flag and restart your browser.
edge://flags/#edge-tab-groups
It’s worth noting that tab groups will remain available in the workspace even after restarting Edge. In this way, you can easily continue where you left off.
Edge Workspaces: First Impressions
The new workspaces feature in Microsoft Edge brings some much-needed controls to efficiently manage tabs in the browser. Combined with tab groups, it can simplify the workflow of users who rely on their browser for their daily work. However, there are a few quirks with this feature in its current implementation.
One aspect where the feature could use some improvement is tab management. In your current state, cannot easily switch between workspaces between tabs. It would be convenient to expand the workspace switcher and manage tabs in all workspaces from there.
Joyful Edge cannot reorder workspaces anyone. Currently, the study areas are arranged in chronological order. It would be nice to see the option to click and drag workspaces to sort them by priority or importance. I hope Edge’s development team makes these changes to improve the experience before shipping the feature to stable builds. Overall, workspaces are undoubtedly a welcome addition, especially if you’re someone like me who has multiple tabs at any given time.
And before you ask, this is unlike what you get in Firefox with multi-account containers, at least in the current structure. Here the sessions are not separate and I can access the same Google account in different workspaces. For separate sessions, you should look at Edge’s multi-profile features instead. Microsoft now even lets you create a child profile in Edge.
Try Edge Workspaces to Boost Productivity
So, that’s all you need to know about Edge’s upcoming workspaces feature. Given how the feature is functional and looks almost complete, we can expect Microsoft to bundle it with the next version of Edge. For more such tips, check out our articles on using sleep tabs, hiding the title bar in a vertical tab layout, best Edge tips and best Edge flags you should use.
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