Google Chrome is currently the world’s number one browser on both desktop and mobile, so it makes sense for Google to experiment with all kinds of changes that would eventually improve users’ experience with the app.
However, not all these changes are everyone’s cup of tea, and more recently, the company made the unexpected decision of removing some options from the tab context menu in Google Chrome.
With the release of Chrome 78, the company pulled a bunch of options, including new tab, close other tabs, and bookmark all tabs, most likely in an attempt to simplify the context menu and keep only the tools that are more widely-used.
Unsurprisingly, the latest version of the browser, which is Chrome 78.0.3904.108 brings back one of these features. The “Close other tabs” option in the context menu is back, most likely after the public backlash that happened after the removal took place.
Low usage
In a discussion about this feature, a Google engineer explains that the feature was brought back because there’s no other way to close the other tabs from the browser interface.
“’Close other tabs’ was removed following the discussion here https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=515930. With further consideration, which included additional usage analysis and listening to user feedback, we decided to restore ‘Close other tabs’ to the tab context menu. Folks who use this feature can’t efficiently take this action any other way from Chrome’s UI,” the post reads.
The feature was originally removed because of low usage. Google says only 2 percent of the users who install Chrome on their devices actually click the close other tabs option, as per TechDows.
If you missed the “Close other tabs” option in Chrome browser, make sure you update to the latest version to restore it regardless of the desktop platform you’re using.
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