Most of the time I use Google Chrome.

Most of the time, it's Google Chrome, which I started using long before I joined the Tom's Guide team and use at work.

I know Chrome is not for everyone, but I liked how easy it was to use with my existing Google account. Now that I can use it at work, everything is wonderfully simple.

Recently, however, new features in Chrome have begun to be made available to Google Workspace users. This is an upgrade to New Tab, which I call upon regularly, and it has streamlined my workday in such an intuitive way.

So here's what happened: before one of my meetings today, I needed to add data to a shared Google Sheet.

Naturally, I pressed Ctrl + T to open a new tab in chrome, moved my mouse to the bookmarks bar, clicked on the spreadsheet bookmark, and navigated to the page I needed.

But suddenly, just below the mouse pointer, a handy widget appeared showing the six most recently opened files on my Google drive and the details of who last updated them. The spreadsheet I'm looking for? It's at the top.

Even better, right next to it is a similar Google Calendar widget that shows me that my next meeting is not until after lunch.

It may seem silly to gush about browser widgets, aka Chrome cards, but these little upgrades to Chrome have really made my daily work life easier. It makes me wonder how I would have worked so long without them, and with productivity-enhancing features like these, it must be a dream goal.

While researching this new Chrome card, I was reminded of Chrome's customization capabilities. Perhaps this is an indication that more Chrome Cards will be coming in the future, but Google (to my knowledge) has not promised anything in that regard.

What the company has stated is that these new tab upgrades will begin rolling out in late September 2024 and will be available to all managed users of Google Workspace this year, according to the blog post.

It's very convenient to have Google Calendar and Drive open and waiting for you whenever you open a new tab.

Sure, I know I can already do it easily by opening a new tab, moving my mouse to the little grid icon in the upper right corner, and using it to open the quick menu of Google apps, but life is too short to click my mouse three times when I only have to do it once.

Instead, I wish every browser builder out there would steal this feature (if they don't already use it) and extend it. For example, being able to open a new tab in Edge and see custom shortcuts to your favorite websites is nice enough, but a similar widget that puts your most frequently used files at your fingertips would make the browser much more useful.

But it seems like a pipe dream to believe that companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft might work together to make these kinds of useful browser features interoperable and generally available. My hope is that these new tab features will be rolled out to more Chrome users soon.