How to Open an Entire Bookmarks Folder as Tabs in Chrome

If you've grouped bookmarks into a folder — reading list, project links, recipes — Chrome can open every one of them as its own tab in a single click. Most people bookmark things one at a time and never discover the folder-level shortcut that undoes the tedium.

Open an entire folder at once

1. Open the bookmarks bar (if it's hidden, Ctrl+Shift+B / Cmd+Shift+B toggles it) or the full bookmarks manager (Ctrl+Shift+O / Cmd+Shift+O).
2. Find the folder you want and right-click it.
3. Choose "Open all" — Chrome opens every bookmark inside that folder as a new tab, in the current window, in the order they're listed.

If the folder is nested inside another folder on the bookmarks bar, you can also just click the parent folder to reveal a dropdown, then right-click the specific subfolder from there — same "Open all" option applies at any level.

Open the folder in a new window instead

Right-clicking a folder also shows "Open all (N) in new window" — N being however many bookmarks are inside. This opens the whole set as tabs in a brand-new window, leaving your current tabs untouched. It's the better choice when:

• You don't want the folder's tabs mixed in with what you're already working on.
• You're about to open a large folder and want to keep the "sudden flood of new tabs" contained to its own window you can close in one action when you're done.

Opening bookmarks selectively, one at a time

"Open all" is all-or-nothing — every bookmark in the folder opens, no picking and choosing. If you only want some of them:

• Middle-click each bookmark (or Ctrl-click / Cmd-click on a trackpad) to open it in a new background tab without leaving the folder view, one at a time.
• This works from both the bookmarks bar dropdown and the full bookmarks manager, so you can skim a folder and open only the ones that are actually relevant today.

Where a bookmarks folder stops being enough

A bookmarks folder is a flat, permanent list — every item stays until you manually delete it, with no sense of what you've already gotten to versus what's still pending. That works fine for a small, stable set of links. It gets awkward once a folder becomes the place you dump "read later" links faster than you ever open them: the folder keeps growing, "Open all" gets slower and messier every time, and there's no way to tell at a glance which of the 40 bookmarks in there you already skimmed last week.

It's also invisible to Chrome's own search — bookmark titles show up in the address bar, but there's no way to search inside the pages you've saved, only their titles.

Amazing Tabs is built for that growing, "read later" kind of list instead of the small, stable kind:

• Save a tab in one click, no folder to pick first — sort it later, or never, and it's still findable.
• Press ⌘K / Ctrl+K to search across everything you've saved, not just bookmark titles.
• Open just what you need, not an all-or-nothing folder dump — search, then open the two or three results that actually matter right now.
• Free for up to 100 saved links, so a "read later" pile has somewhere to go besides a bookmarks folder that only ever grows.

A bookmarks folder is great for a fixed set of links. It's the wrong tool for a growing "read later" pile. Add Amazing Tabs to Chrome — free, no signup. Save what you're not ready to open, and actually find it again later.

Quick recap

• Right-click any bookmarks folder → "Open all" opens every bookmark inside it as a tab, in listed order, in the current window.
• "Open all (N) in new window" does the same thing in a fresh window, keeping your current tabs untouched.
• Middle-click (or Ctrl/Cmd-click) individual bookmarks to open them one at a time instead of the whole folder.
• Large folders (50+) can slow Chrome briefly when opened all at once — a new window keeps that load contained.
• Folders don't scale well for a growing, unsorted pile — they're built for a small, stable set of links, not a "read later" list that only ever grows.

Further reading: How to Save Chrome Tabs Without Bookmarks for why bookmarks aren't always the right save mechanism, or How to Bookmark All Open Tabs in Chrome at Once for the reverse operation — turning your open tabs into a folder in the first place.