Open Chrome, navigate to any website, launch Chrome in split-screen mode, open the context menu, and select “move to other window.” This opens a new instance of Chrome, though it should be noted you can’t open any additional windows and all tabs are merged into a single window when you exit split-screen mode.The feature was initially spotted by Techdows and is available in the Chrome 100 Canary build on Android. If your device doesn’t run Android 12 and you want to open two Chrome windows side-by-side, there is a way to do it. Otherwise, you’ll need to wait for a future Chrome release that will have the instance switcher flag enabled by default.
If you’re interested in trying out the feature right now on your Android 12 device, you need to have Chrome Beta, Dev, or Canary installed and the instance-switcher flag enabled. The code change adding the actual feature flag was initially merged in late June, though, and the flag can be found in Chrome 93 or later. Finally, the state of each instance is stored in the SharedPreferences of Google Chrome, allowing windows to persist through a reboot.Įarlier today, a code change enabling the instance switcher flag by default for devices running Android 12 was merged to the Chromium Gerrit. You can open up to 5 windows in total, though there’s no limit to how many tabs can be opened within each window. Once a second Chrome instance is open, the context menu is updated with a “manage windows” button that lists all active windows, which window is in focus, the title of the active tab in each window, and how many tabs are open in each window. Tapping on “new window” opens a new instance of Chrome in the other half of the screen. These code changes add a “new window” button to the context menu of Google Chrome whenever the device enters split-screen mode. In the past few weeks, multiple code changes tagged “ multi-instance” were submitted to the Chromium Gerrit.
That’s set to change with the upcoming Android 12 update and a new version of Google Chrome, however, as Google is working on bringing multi-instance support and a window manager to Chrome for Android. On Android, you can also put tabs into groups, but you can’t open multiple instances of Chrome like you can on desktop. On desktop, you can put tabs into groups within one or more windows which you can then rearrange using your OS’s window manager. Chrome tabs can be organized in different ways depending on the platform.
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