Tab Islands tips and tricks (Creation, Handpick Islands, Expand/Collapse, Shortcuts..)
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sarasc Opera last edited by sarascFor early access visit https://www.opera.com/one
Tab islands and workspaces in Opera offer a powerful way to organize and group tabs for better productivity.
There are two methods to create a tab island:
Auto Island: If you frequently open multiple tabs from the same website, you can use Auto Island to group those tabs automatically, saving you time and effort. If you want to disable Auto-Island, just go to Easy Settings and disable the feature.
To create an auto island, you have several options:
- Right-click on links and select "open in new tab"
- Use the keyboard/mouse combination on links: Control + Left click
- Click on links using middle mouse button
Manual Island: If you prefer a more hands-on approach to organizing tabs, you can use the manual method to group tabs based on your current task or project, allowing for better focus and clarity.
To create a manual island, follow these steps:
- Select multiple tabs on the tab strip by pressing Control+Left click.
- These selected tabs will look brighter than the others.
- Right-click on the selected tabs and choose 'Create Island'
Tab islands come with several features, including:
Expand and collapse: Clicking on the island color expands or collapses the islands, which can help you breathe space into your tab strip. You can also collapse the tabs while sharing your screen to improve your privacy.
Adding tabs inside the Island: You can open a new tab within a tab Island by clicking on a plus icon at the end of the island.
Moving tabs to an Island: You can drag and drop any tabs to an island. You can do this if the island is expanded. Another option is to right-click on a single tab and move it to a Tab Island. If you don't want to expand the Island, it is more convenient to use later.
Both Auto Island and Manual Island can be created using mouse or keyboard actions, providing flexibility and convenience.
In the future, we can expect tab islands to become even more sophisticated. They may incorporate machine learning algorithms to suggest islands based on surfing context or browsing habits, which could greatly enhance productivity by providing customized and intuitive tab organization.
In addition to Tab Islands, Opera also offers workspaces, which allow you to group your tabs by task or project, one layer above to the existing tab strip.
Find out more about workspaces here.
We'd love to hear your feedback on how you use tab islands in Opera and if you have any suggestions for further improvements.
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Pinned by sarasc
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komi-the-cat last edited by
@sarasc Is there a way to delete a tab island other than individually closing each one?
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sarasc Opera last edited by
Hello Pusheen the cat!
We hope your browsing have upgraded with the islands. And thank you for sharing your feedback about closing island tabs all at once.
We value all input and hope to receive further comments on similar experiences.
As we test the option to close islands at once(destroy), we are also considering an alternative solution: archiving the islands(sink) so that the island tabs become searchable even if the island is no longer present on the tab strip.
I wonder what Schrodinger's cat would go for
You can see upcoming features here among some other improvements we plan to release.
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RADRaze2KX last edited by
@sarasc Opera One seems to have gotten rid of the ability to detach a tab from the current window and create a new window. Is this functionality planned on being added back in? As a web designer, and IT business owner that needs to megatask between windows, it is extremely frustrating not being able to detach a tab and move it into a new/existing window in Opera One.
Also, I wish we could customize the island indicator color.
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IvanRosLiwe last edited by
I can customise the name of the Tab Islands?
If I want to move a tab to a specific island I get Island 1 and I can't customise it. I can't change the colour either. Is it possible to customise it? Is it planned for the future? -
sarasc Opera last edited by sarasc
Thank you for your understanding as we work on improving Opera One. While reworking the tab strip, we had to temporarily disable some existing features, including "Detaching a tab to a new window." Currently some of the tab management extensions are also not compatible.
However, we want to assure you that we are aware of this issue and are actively working on a solution.We are grateful for the community's help in identifying known and unknown problems, and we're excited to share that the ability to detach a tab to a new window will be available again in the near future. You can follow up for the upcoming changes here.
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ghirahim last edited by leocg
@sarasc said in Tab Islands tips and tricks (Creation, Handpick Islands, Expand/Collapse, Shortcuts..):
To create a manual island, follow these steps:
Select multiple tabs on the tab strip by pressing Control+Left click.
These selected tabs will look brighter than the others.
Right-click on the selected tabs and choose 'Create Island'Sorry, but no, no and no. Sometimes I truly don't understand you. Why would you make it so complicated? Just to remind you, 13 years (!!!) ago you introduced Tab Stacking. The simplest way to merge tabs together. Drag & Drop. And now? "Hold this key, click on all tabs, then right click and select ...."
Listen to us. I've been using Opera for over 20 years. Don't complicate things unnecessarily. It's awful. Change it ASAP.
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whataboutwolves last edited by
@sarasc said in Tab Islands tips and tricks (Creation, Handpick Islands, Expand/Collapse, Shortcuts..):
There are two methods to create a tab island:
Manual Island: If you prefer a more hands-on approach to organizing tabs, you can use the manual method to group tabs based on your current task or project, allowing for better focus and clarity.
To create a manual island, follow these steps:
- Select multiple tabs on the tab strip by pressing Control+Left click.
- These selected tabs will look brighter than the others.
- Right-click on the selected tabs and choose 'Create Island'
MacOS Ventura/M1 here, the way you describe to create a manual island does not work, nothing happens with Control+left click - too complicated anyway
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RomanRcT last edited by
When this amazing feature like "tab islands" will work in Linux? I've installed Opera One 99.0.4765.0 on my Fedora 38 Linux and I'm not able to use this feature. Also I have completly different visible UI than in MS Windows.
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JoannaCzajka Opera last edited by
@ghirahim Hi!
A tab island is created itself - effortlessly. Yes, you need to browse in a pattern when you, for example, scan a news page and open a couple of articles in new tabs to read one by one, or you search in Google and you open several results in new tabs. We learnt from our research that this is a very popular behaviour amongst users.
Drag and drop to create an island it's a smooth way to create such a new group of tabs - we're working on it.
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JoannaCzajka Opera last edited by
For the manual way of creating a tab island:
We are working on "drag and drop" a tab onto another to create an island.
At the moment, you can select mutliple tabs (pressing shift or cmd). Once you selected them, you need to open a tab context menu (either by tapping with two fingers or pressing cmd + left click).
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ghirahim last edited by
@joannaczajka said in Tab Islands tips and tricks (Creation, Handpick Islands, Expand/Collapse, Shortcuts..):
Drag and drop to create an island it's a smooth way to create such a new group of tabs - we're working on it.
Lovely, nice to hear that!
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burnout426 Volunteer last edited by
@sarasc said in Tab Islands tips and tricks (Creation, Handpick Islands, Expand/Collapse, Shortcuts..):
To create an auto island, you have several options:
Right-click on links and select "open in new tab"
Use the keyboard/mouse combination on links: Control + Left click
Click on links using middle mouse buttonIf using Opera Sync and syncing tabs, when you goto the URL
opera://activity, select a session for another device, and "right-click -> open link in new tab" on each of the tab links, this automatically creates an island and puts all of the tabs in that island. That's not something I'd expect. Maybe auto islands shouldn't be created when coming from theopera://activitypage like they're not created when coming from theopera://bookmarkspage.There's also the question of right-clicking on all the "learn more" links in
opera://settingsand opening them in new tabs.. A tab island is automatically created for them and they're grouped together in that island. For this particular case ofopera://settings, it doesn't matter to me either way, but the behavior should be reviewed to determine whether it's expected or not. -
komi-the-cat last edited by
some feedback - visually, it gets very confusing to tell which tab is active at a quick glance when there are some tabs in islands, some tabs not in islands, and an active tab. The tabs not in islands are more visually distinct by not having a background border, while the active tab looks very similar to a tab inside an island with the background bubble/border. Perhaps making it a different color or something would help
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IvanRosLiwe last edited by
@komi-the-cat Yes! Or they could even put the inactive islands in grayscale
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abstractalgo last edited by
This has hindered my experience when having tabs with a video call + other tab that I'm working on or screen-sharing. The current workaround with creating a new window, closing the current tab, and opening it in that new window is a no-go.
Dragging tabs across windows can come later, but please provide a context menu option to move a tab between windows, at least; and as soon as possible.
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JoannaCzajka Opera last edited by
@burnout426 Thanks for noticing. In deed opening tabs from the session of another device is not entirely a context group - island, that you want to create with "opera://activity" tab.
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JoannaCzajka Opera last edited by
@komi-the-cat thanks for the feedback. We're still working on such details, especially contrasts. Some updates coming soon.
