How to separate work and personal tabs in Chrome

For a strict split — separate logins, history and bookmarks — use two Chrome profiles. For a lighter split inside one profile, keep work and personal tabs in separate groups and close the personal ones when work starts. Many people combine both.

A client proposal, a hotel booking, the team chat, a recipe, a pull request, a birthday gift you haven’t bought yet. When work and personal tabs share one tab bar, each one is a small interruption. And when you share your screen in a meeting, they are on display too.

There are three main ways to keep them apart in Chrome. They solve slightly different problems.

Option 1: Chrome profiles — the strict split

A Chrome profile is a separate browser inside Chrome, with its own bookmarks, history, saved passwords, extensions and Google account sign-in.

1. Click your profile picture at the top right of Chrome.
2. Click Add (or Add Chrome profile) and follow the steps. Sign in with your work account, or continue without one.
3. Give each profile a name and a color, so you can tell the windows apart at a glance.

Good for: separate Google accounts, company policies, and making sure personal history never ends up on a work account. The catch: switching means changing windows, and a page you need in both places has to be saved twice. Extensions are installed per profile, so a tab manager in each profile keeps its own groups.

Two small habits make profiles easier to live with. First, give each profile its own shortcut if your system allows it, so you open the right one directly. Second, watch which profile a link opens in: links clicked in email or chat apps usually open in the Chrome profile you used most recently, which is how personal links end up in work windows.

Option 2: Separate windows — quick but fragile

Keep one window for work and one for personal browsing. It takes no setup: press Ctrl+N (⌘+N on Mac) and drag tabs across.

Good for: a quick split during the day. The catch: windows mix again quickly, and after a restart it is easy to end up with everything in one place. Chrome’s own tab groups can help inside each window — a colored “Personal” label is easy to spot — but they still sit in the same tab bar, and a crowded bar of labels is its own kind of clutter.

Option 3: Groups — a light split inside one profile

If you use one account for everything, or don’t want to juggle profiles, sort tabs by context instead. In LB TAB Layers, each group is a named set of tabs in Chrome’s side panel, saved as a Chrome bookmark folder:

1. Create your groups. For example “Client A,” “Internal,” and “Personal.” Subgroups help if you want “Personal” split into “Shopping” and “Travel.”
2. Add a divider. Right-click empty space in the group list and choose Section divider to draw a line between work groups and personal ones.
3. Sort your open tabs. Tabs that aren’t in any group appear under Solo Tabs. Drag each into a group, or right-click and choose Save to Folder.
4. Switch modes with ■ and ▶. At the start of the workday, press ■ on your personal groups: their tabs close and stay saved. At the end of the day, press ■ on work and ▶ on personal.

The free version allows five groups (subgroups count toward that), and every feature is open for the first three months. More in groups and subgroups.

Keep personal sites out of work hours

Closing personal tabs helps, but a quick visit to a news or shopping site is only a click away. LB TAB Layers has a Focus Timer for that:

1. Right-click your “Personal” group (or a group of distracting sites) and choose Block / unblock during Focus Timer.
2. Click the clock button at the top of the side panel to start a 25-minute session, and set a PIN.
3. Until the timer ends, opening those sites shows a Focus Timer notice instead of the page. Enter your PIN to stop early.

Before you share your screen

Video calls are where mixed tabs hurt most. A quick checklist:

• Share a window or a single tab, not your whole screen. Chrome’s share dialog lets you pick one tab, which is the safest option.
• Close personal groups first. Press ■ on them a minute before the call. They stay saved and come back with ▶ afterwards.
• Check the side panel too. If you share the whole window, the side panel is part of it. Collapse personal groups or close the panel while presenting.

Which option should you choose?

The setup we recommend

• If your employer gives you a work Google account, use a separate profile for it. That is the cleanest line between work and personal data.
• Inside each profile, use groups to keep projects apart and close what you aren’t using.
• If you use one account for everything, groups with a divider and the Focus Timer give you most of the benefit without switching windows.

The point isn’t a perfect wall between work and life. It is a tab bar that only shows what you are doing right now, so the rest stops pulling at your attention. For freelancers juggling several clients, this comparison of workspace-style tab managers may also help.

Frequently asked questions

Q. How do I separate work and personal browsing in Chrome?

Create a second Chrome profile from your profile picture at the top right. Each profile has its own bookmarks, history, extensions and Google sign-in. For a lighter split inside one profile, keep work and personal tabs in separate groups.

Q. Can I hide personal tabs during a screen share?

Close them before the meeting. In LB TAB Layers, pressing ■ on your personal group closes all its tabs while keeping them saved, and ▶ reopens them afterwards.

Q. Do Chrome profiles share extensions?

No. Extensions are installed per profile. If you use LB TAB Layers in two profiles, each one has its own groups, saved in that profile’s bookmarks.

Q. How can I stop visiting personal sites during work?

Use the Focus Timer in LB TAB Layers. Mark a group with Block / unblock during Focus Timer, then start a 25-minute session with a PIN. Sites in that group are blocked until the timer ends.

▶ See it in action

Managing bookmarks and tabs together in the sidebar. (The video shows the Japanese UI.)