Chrome's new Split Tabs feature: How to Enable & Use it like Edge’s Split Screen

Google is working on a Split Tabs feature, similar to the Split Screen functionality already available in Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi. The feature, now available in Chrome Canary, allows you to split and unsplit tabs via a right-click context menu option called “Show side by side”.

When you have multiple tabs open, you may need to view or compare two pages—whether they’re documents or websites. The split-screen feature makes this easier.

How Split Tabs Work in Chrome:

To use the feature, you need at least one open tab—Chrome will treat the other side as a new tab page. Simply right-click a tab and select “Show side-by-side” to split the screen, displaying both tabs on opposite sides with a center divider. When you’re done, right-click again and choose “Exit side-by-side” to return to the normal view.

The feature supports grouped tabs too. When the feature is active, you’ll notice a Split Screen button on the left side of the toolbar (similar to Microsoft Edge). Currently, this is a placeholder and may work in future updates, avoiding the need for right-clicking.

How to enable Split Tabs or Split Screen feature in Chrome

1. Close Chrome Canary (if running).
2. Right-click its desktop shortcut and select “Properties”.
3. In the Target field, add a space and paste the following:
   --enable-features=SideBySide
4. Click OK and Apply.

Launch Chrome Canary using the modified shortcut, open multiple tabs, then right-click any tab and select ‘Show side by side’ to split them.

Google is renaming “Side by Side” to “Split Tabs” in the code, so the option names may change. The feature is still in early development, may crash, and isn’t yet available as a flag in Chrome Canary. Brave has also recently implemented a similar feature with name called ” Split View”.

Comparison with Microsoft Edge: In Edge, Split Screen shows the active tab on the left and open/recent tabs on the right for easy comparison. Chrome’s current implementation only splits two tabs, with no option to select from open tabs—hopefully, this will improve.

Does Chrome need a Split Screen feature?

Given that Edge and Vivaldi already offer this, Chrome users could benefit from better multitasking, document comparison, or side-by-side browsing.

Until now, you could use split tab extensions or manually resize and arrange tabs side by side. You could also use Windows or macOS’s built-in split screen feature. However, Chrome will soon have its own native tab-splitting feature.

Google may make it avaialble for testing it via flags in future Canary builds for wider testing.

In addition to this, Google is redesigning the ‘Clear browsing data’ dialog and adding a setting to disable toast notifications. Additionally, Chrome’s scrollbar will soon adapt to custom theme colors.

Whats your take on Chrome’s Split Tabs feature? Have you liked it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.