If you’re looking for a way to easily view two websites side by side in Android, that is now very possible, thanks to Android Nougat and split screen mode. Here’s how to do it.
You’ve undoubtedly heard of the Android Nougat split screen mode. This handy little feature allows you to have two apps open, simultaneously, so you can work more efficiently. But did you know that with split screen you can also view two Chrome tabs side by side? It’s actually very handy for anyone whose multi-tasking extends into the realm of web browsing (especially when work depends upon you using various websites.
But how do you do this? The way standard split screen works, there’s no means of opening up two different Chrome instances (unless you’re working with, say Chrome Stable and Chrome Beta). Thanks to a bit of trickery with the Android Chrome browser, we can actually pull this off. Let me show you how this works.
Tricking Chrome
If you open up Chrome and go to a website and then attempt to use split screen in the standard fashion (long press the overview button), you’ll notice there are no other Chrome browser tabs to be added to the screen (Figure A).
Figure A
How do we then trick Chrome? It’s really easy. Open Chrome and then long press the overview button to initial split screen mode. Now tap the Chrome menu button (three vertical dots in the upper right corner) and tap Move to other window (Figure B).
Figure B
When you tap that menu entry, the tab will then open in another window, and place it in split screen mode. You can then turn your device to landscape mode and view the pages side by side (Figure C).
Figure C
To get out of split screen mode, all you have to do is drag the divider bar to the bottom of the screen and the top app will take over the display. You can also tap the device Home button to vanquish the windows; however, when you use this method, the next time you open a new app, it will appear in split screen mode, with the original top app still open.
A very handy feature
If you’re like me, you tend to work with a number of browser tabs open. Until Android Nougat, doing this wasn’t always terribly efficient. Thanks to the latest iteration, you can now easily easily view two tabs, side by side, for a much more convenient workflow.
