With the release of Android Lollipop almost two years ago, Google introduced a rather controversial feature: Merge Tabs. What it did was unbundle all open Chrome tabs and place them individually in the recent apps/task switcher screen. Some people may have appreciated this but most of us did not. For a start, it made us lose that all-important tab counter and generally the ease of swiping left or right to switch tabs. Since it was enabled by default on Chrome, users had to take a few unnecessary steps to disable it.
Going forward, that won’t be the case anymore. Or so it seems.
According to DroidLife, the latest update to Chrome beta in version 51 arrives without the feature.
While it is likely that Google is simply experimenting, as it always does, chances are that we may never see ‘Merge Tabs’ as we know it again. And that may be a good thing. After all, other than a few users who were stuck with it without knowing what to do, most of us turned it off every other time we installed Chrome and never looked back. We’re unlikely to miss it.