Search tabs, history, and bookmarks with @

"I know I have it open somewhere…" — Chrome solves that with a single @ sign. When you've got twenty tabs open and you're hunting for one specific one, clicking through them the classic way takes forever and it's easy to scroll right past it. Chrome has a hidden feature right in the address bar that narrows your search to exactly the place a thing actually lives.

A typical scenario

Vojtěch, a journalist, has more than thirty tabs open — research in progress, two half-written articles, sources to verify. He needs to get back to the tab with a statistic he opened an hour ago. Without the @ trick, he goes through tabs one by one, hovering over thumbnails in the top bar and trying to recognize the right one from a tiny icon or a fragment of the title.

With the @ trick, he clicks into the address bar, types @tabs and a keyword from the page — Chrome instantly narrows the suggestions down to only the open tabs that match. He finds the right one in a few seconds instead of a minute of clicking through thirty tabs up top.

How to do it

1. Click into the address bar, or bring it up with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + L (Cmd + L on Mac).
2. Type @tabs and a space — Chrome switches search mode to only your currently open tabs, then type a keyword from the title or content of the page.
3. Type @history and a space to search your browsing history, from any point in the past.
4. Type @bookmarks and a space to search only your saved bookmarks.
5. All three modes search by partial text too, not just the full title — one word you remember from the page is enough.
6. After typing the @ sign, Chrome will also suggest other available shortcuts on its own (like searching within a specific configured search engine), so you don't have to memorize them all.

The best tools

• Chrome's built-in address-bar search — nothing to install, works right away in every current version of Chrome.
• The same feature in Chromium-based browsers — Edge and Brave have similar address-bar search, though the exact shortcuts may differ slightly.
• Tab-management extensions (e.g. OneTab) — useful when you have so many tabs that even @tabs search feels overwhelming, and you'd rather save and close them regularly instead.
• Chrome's tab overview in the top-right corner — complements @tabs with a visual preview of all open tabs, handy when you can't recall the search term at all.

What you get out of it

• Time: an estimated 2–3 minutes a day saved on hunting for a lost tab or a page from history, easily more for people with a lot of open tabs.
• Less frustration: no more clicking through dozens of tabs when you know a page is "somewhere in there."
• Better use of history: the @history feature turns your browser into a genuine archive of everything you've ever read, not just a forgotten list.
• Fewer permanently open tabs: once you know you can always quickly find a page again through @history, you stop keeping it open "just in case," and tabs stop piling up as much.

Pro tip

Combine @tabs with a keyword you remember from the actual content of the page, not just the title — Chrome also searches what's visible on the page, so you don't need to remember the exact tab name. The same trick works in reverse: when you're looking for information you suspect you've already read before but don't know where, try @history first, before reaching for a regular web search.