Tab Groups

Tab groups let you organize the tabs in a window the way Chrome and Firefox do. A named, colored chip heads each group, and its member tabs sit next to the chip in the tab bar. Use groups to keep related tabs together, tell projects apart at a glance, and tuck a set of tabs out of the way without closing them.

Creating a Group

Right-click a tab and choose Add Tab to Group > New Group…. iTerm2 asks for a name (it suggests the tab's current title) and gives the new group a color. The tab moves next to its new chip.

To add another tab to a group that already exists, right-click that tab and choose Add Tab to Group and then the group's name from the submenu. A checkmark marks the group the tab already belongs to. To take a tab back out, right-click it and choose Remove Tab from Group.

The members of a group always stay contiguous in the tab bar, so adding a tab from elsewhere moves it next to the rest of the group.

Managing a Group

Right-click a group's chip to act on the whole group:

• Rename Group… changes its name.
• The color swatches just below Rename recolor the group; pick a preset or open the full color picker.
• Duplicate Group makes a copy of the group and its tabs.
• Move Group to New Window tears the whole group off into its own window.
• Remove All Tabs from Group ungroups the tabs, leaving them in place without a chip.
• Close Group closes every tab in the group.

You can rearrange groups by dragging. Drag a chip to move the entire group within its window or into another window. Drag a single tab to move it around inside its group, into a different group, or out of a group entirely. A tab dragged out of the tab bar into empty space becomes an ungrouped tab in a new window.

Collapsing a Group

Click a group's chip (or choose Collapse Group from its menu) to hide the group's tabs behind the chip. The chip then shows how many tabs it holds. Click the chip again, or choose Expand Group, to bring the tabs back. Collapsing and expanding are animated.

Selecting a tab that lives in a collapsed group automatically expands the group, so the active tab is never hidden. For the same reason, a group cannot collapse when it is the only group of tabs in the window.

Collapsing works on both horizontal and vertical tab bars and in every theme.

Persistence

A group carries its name and color with its member tabs, so the grouping survives everything that saves and restores windows, including window arrangements and restart. A group's collapsed or expanded state persists across restarts as well.