Microsoft Edge’s Workspaces feature lets you share a group of tabs with a single link

Workspaces is a new feature coming to Microsoft Edge designed to make it easier to organize and share the dozens of browser tabs that you use on a daily basis. The feature has been popping up in Edge’s early preview builds for over a year now, but Microsoft is offering more detail on it today as part of its Ignite conference alongside new security and shopping features for its browser.

Screenshots of Workspaces in preview show how users can create groups of tabs by clicking an icon to the left of the tab row. They can add tabs and name and color-code each group. They can then access, edit, and open previously created groups from that same icon. If you’ve ever used a tab manager add-on like OneTab, then Workspaces seems like a neat, integrated version of this software with more management options.

Microsoft says users will also be able to share these tab groups, but it’s unclear how this will work. Press materials say that Workspaces can be shared with “one link,” allowing a new team member to be sent onboarding information without “overwhelming them with links and files over email,” for example. Workspaces also sync between users, allowing different people to edit and update a group of tabs in tandem.

Tab groups have been available in browsers like Chrome for a while now, but Microsoft’s more collaborative take on the feature could give Edge’s implementation an advantage. The feature is currently available in preview, but Microsoft’s announcement doesn’t say when it could get a wider release. 

There are also new security features that Microsoft is outlining today. The most interesting of these is “typo protection,” which is designed to alert you when you’ve misspelled a URL and may have accidentally ended up on a malicious imitation site (a practice known as typosquatting). The feature has been cropping up in preview builds since last year, but Microsoft says it’s now widely available to Edge users. Finally, Microsoft notes that Edge can now switch to an enhanced security mode to lock down the browser’s security settings when you’re browsing off the beaten track.