8 ms·

Show HN: Open-Source Chrome Extension for auto-grouping tabs by URL patterns

140 points by masterofnull 5y ago

deanclatworthy 5y ago
What I want is tab groups by concept or activity. Let’s say I’m looking for info on a new grill I’d start a new tab session and give it a quick name of ”grill” and it’d group all tabs and history under that. I could expand and collapse it and otherwise go back to other things tab groups.
- thanhhaimai 5y ago
  I may have misunderstood your request, but the feature you want (Tab group) was recently added: https://www.google.com/chrome/tips/#organize https://www.google.com/chrome/tips/#organize
- ryftt_ 5y ago
  This may be what you're looking for, I've been using it for a few weeks now and it's really useful. I use it in conjunction with Notion and they have been a power-duo. https://workona.com/ https://workona.com/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- j1elo 5y ago
  I use the Tree Style Tab addon in Firefox for exactly that purpose. The addon doesn't have the concept of named groups, it is just an extension to organize tabs in a tree... but that's more than enough. Starting with a keyword search on the parent tab, all subsequent links are opened in child tabs that can be expanded / collapsed. When collapsed, the parent tab's title are the keywords, so it's a nice visual way to have the whole sub-tree "filed" into a single named entry. There are even a couple extras that allow me to long-middle-mouse-click a parent tab, and it unloads from memory the whole sub-tree. It's a pretty neat addon!
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    It would be nice to have nodes in the tree that don't actually correspond to tabs though. For this specific use case of grouping.
    - hashhar 5y ago
      I've got the perfect gift for you - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tst-more-tree-commands/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tst-more-tree... A companion extension to TST by the original author.
  - slightwinder 5y ago
    > The addon doesn't have the concept of named groups Actually, it has, but it's seems to lack UI-Integration for whatever reason. I use this bookmarklet for some years not to create a Group-Tab: javascript:(function(){window.open("ext+treestyletab:group?title=NewGroup&temporary=false")})(); To rename it, just click the title inside the group-tab.
- thunderbong 5y ago
  You should have a look at Vivaldi
  - tssva 5y ago
    If you use a laptop my experience with Vivaldi is that under both Windows and Linux it is a giant battery drain. Also if you use a touchpad gestures for your browser navigation it currently doesn't support doing so.
- rayrag 5y ago
  OneTab will do something like this. If you click icon it will send all tabs into one group and if you name that group you can later add current tab, tabs on left or right or all opened tabs to this group. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo...
- hs86 5y ago
  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk... This Chrome extension allows you to name and annotate your entire browser session in a tree structure, and unlike TST on Firefox, it is not limited to a single window. In addition, it allows you to unload entire subtrees, and you can restore subtrees (or the whole session) on another computer.
  - mmerlin 5y ago
    Tabs-outliner helps me zoom out and see the forest of currently opened tabs (and very handily lets them also be closed to save memory and reopened days or weeks later when required again). Also every month or two I dump all my mobile chrome tabs over to my desktop Chrome, so that I can close all tabs on my phone. i.e. History -> Tabs from other Devices -> Open All Then I backup, search, and group my URL history hierarchy in the the tree-view of Tabs-outliner
- smichel17 5y ago
  I thought I wanted this, too, and I've used every Firefox extension under the sun to try and achieve it, from the original panorama that was part of Firefox to tree style tabs to a few grouping extensions using containers. Turns out that almost anything which makes it less painful to keep open large numbers of tabs, also makes my tab count explode. I think I understand the reason, too: the easiest time to close a tab is immediately (after you're done using it). That's when you have the most context, so you are in the best position to say "I don't need this tab any more". The longer you wait, the longer you'll have to spend figuring out what that tab was about, so you can decide if it's safe to close. Or, of course, you could deal with that later... (And we know how it goes from here). There is utility in grouping tabs within a working session. Browser windows work pretty well for this, as long as your OS / window manager has a sane way to switch between multiple windows of the same application. There is also utility in being able to hide and restore groups you're using frequently but not constantly, like a side project you're working on at night or on weekends. Again, a window manager with a "workspaces" feature is clutch. Beyond that, there are rapidly diminishing returns. You can pull those features into your browser via extensions, of course, but I've found they require too much care to avoid the "hundreds of tabs" issue. I'd much rather have a tree style or grouped history than anything with state that I need to manually clean up.
- lunarboy 5y ago
  Workona allows you to switch between workspaces by name, but requires an account setup
- carrolldunham 5y ago
  Have you thought about doing this with bookmarks? I do exactly this that way and it's ...just great? You can nest folders within topics and while one's active you just click the star once to put the page in there. I think people usually admit their tab collecting is just a mental vicious-cycle, like hoarding, and I don't really see why reinforcing that behaviour with a 'better tab system' always wins out over simply.. using the well-designed system for doing what you're attempting - bookmarks. E: I should add when you come back to 'Grill research' you can click "open all" in that or one of the subfolders, so is that even slower than several dead tabs refreshing on view?
cloudking 5y ago
Smart idea to utilize the new grouping feature! One thing I didn't realize until recently, you can click on a tab group name to collapse/expand the whole group.
packetslave 5y ago
neat idea, but it doesn't respect pinned tabs, and the UI is buggy. uninstalled for now.
- random12z1 5y ago
  Who cares if you uninstalled it? The dev made something out of creativity. For you to think your usage matters is insane. Just give feedback or stay quite.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
    > Just give feedback or stay quite. Your comment is self-contradictory - this is Show HN and they just gave their feedback.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
FractalHQ 5y ago
Neat! Thus should be a native feature. Speaking of should-be features, ever since groups came out I’ve wanted the ability to save and load named groups.
12ian34 5y ago
A very similar feature comes out of the box with Vivaldi[0], which I have been trying out recently. Whilst I'm particularly enjoying all the configurability so far, it's too early for me to recommend it. [0]: https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tabs/tab-stacks/#Create_a_new_Tab_Stack https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tabs/tab-stacks/#Create_a_n... -> "Option 3|4"
- nabaraz 5y ago
  What is the appeal of Vivaldi browser? I know it is started by Opera's CEO but it is closed-source (only the chromium part is open-source). The only feature I like is tab split view. Last i tried, it was pretty buggy on video sites.
  - ponyous 5y ago
    Video handling definitely got better in last 6 months. > What is the appeal of Vivaldi browser It's browser made for power users. Bunch of features built in with a lot of flexibility. Few of my favorites: Vertical Tabs, "Stack tabs by host" (this extension practically), Hibernating background tabs.
    - DrammBA 5y ago
      Two of your 3 favorites are not unique to Vivaldi, is there any other feature worth the switch besides "Stack tabs by host"?
      - ponyous 5y ago
        Even stack tabs by host is not unique with this extension is it? :) It's made for power users as I said, for example you can change the right click menu on the tab bar and have only things you care about in there instead of 1000 options. I bet there are other "unique" features, but that's not the point. If you are happy with chrome keep using it.
        DrammBA 5y ago
weaksauce 5y ago
neat webext but I'm curious why no firefox release? after a brief perusal of the code it doesn't look like the code has any glaring incompatibilities.
- lolinder 5y ago
  It looks like this utilizes Chrome's tab groups, which Firefox doesn't have.
  - mdaniel 5y ago
    I wonder if tab reordering is possible, creating pseudo-groups by merely placing all related ones next to each other. Then shift-clicking them could enable tearing off a new window containing all related tabs, which I 100% get isn't the same, but might not be totally worthless, either
    - weaksauce 5y ago
      tab reordering would be possible but the shift-clicking on the tab group would have to be some other mechanism like a context menu action or something along those lines.
      - mdaniel 5y ago
        Oh, apologies, I meant the _user_ would be responsible for shift-clicking and tearing off those tabs; I haven't ever seen an extension that was able to do those kind of wholistic browser operations
        weaksauce 5y ago
        ah i see... yeah an extension could theoretically do it but it would be along the lines of right click on a tab and then select a context menu action that the extension installs that would then do something like "break this group off into a new window"... fairly trivial to implement but I don't think it exists right now.
alan_n 5y ago
Interesting, but would not really use it unless it could auto group by url. I don't want to have to set things up. Like if I have more than X tabs for a site, group them automatically. This would be great when debugging/learning and I have 20-30 tabs open and more than half might be to one new site that contains the docs for x thing I'm doing/learning.
- nikkwong 5y ago
  That would be an awesome feature for this plugin to include. Hoping they add it. I'm using this plugin now and it's very pleasant.
kvothe_ 5y ago
well done!
solarkraft 5y ago
Is “open source” really a feature for browser extensions? I don’t think I’d ever use a proprietary one.
- mdaniel 5y ago
  _Cries in 1Password land_ They've done a good job publishing specs for their on-disk formats, but thus far I've never seen anything for their extensions. Ironically, it's a tiny bit easier now that their in-browser uses the same API as does the "thick" client, but (AFAIK) that API still needs to be fully reversed enough to implement a separate extension Yeah, yeah, I know, "but bitwarden!" I just haven't expended the energy to stand up my own password management infra in order to compare the features
  - weaksauce 5y ago
    if you trust 1password to host your passwords do you not trust bitwarden? it's free for personal use across all your devices and opensource. if it were free without anyone paying for it I'd be a bit more worried about it but since there are paying tiers I think they are more reputable. That said the interface on the client doesn't have the best UX.
killjoywashere 5y ago
What I really want is for my tab groups to sync across devices. I have to use a bunch of computers for various things (I have a half-dozen laptops tethered to their own VPNs) but they all exist for me to do work. News bulletin: it is impossible for me to segregate my work perfectly across 5 organizations. I can sync my tabs, but what I really need these days is a way to sync my tab groups.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  > it is impossible for me to segregate my work perfectly across 5 organizations I used to have 3 different browsers for 3 organizations. They all had same websites usually e.g. Email, social media sites for each organization respectively. Then I had another browser like FF Developer Edition for development, One more for Education and another in VM which gets invoked when needed for checking out URLs from unknown people. I'm power-conscious, So I usually buy laptops with low-TDP (15W) CPUs but capable of running at least 32GB Memory for my aforementioned browser requirements. I run tasks requiring more compute power on cloud. Lately I've limited by browsers to 3(Main/Development/VM), invoke 1 more when necessary. I was able to reduce the browsers by Using desktop Mail client with multiple accounts, adding multiple accounts to Twitter web, Automated posting to social media using Ayrshare (Stopped operating social media accounts which doesn't support it).
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    Does Firefox not support multiple profiles anymore? I would have thought that this would be the natural solution, to have a different profile for each rather than a different browser.
    - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
      It does, I used different browsers for memory reasons as I needed them only occasionally and not open all the time.
  - weaksauce 5y ago
    have you tried using multi-account containers? it's perfectly suited for segregating different identities like work/bank/shopping/social/whatever all in the same browser instance. that plus temporary containers for "privateish" windows is awesome. I am not sure why that's not installed by default if it's not as it is really great. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
Wronnay 5y ago
What is the difference to the other extensions like this? Like https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mark-tab-manager/filgplhfalgafolkffphilkgckdgnona https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mark-tab-manager/f...
mcint 5y ago
Playing some fun games with version numbers. 6.4.0 with initial commit 2 months ago.

140 points by masterofnull 5y ago

What I want is tab groups by concept or activity. Let’s say I’m looking for info on a new grill I’d start a new tab session and give it a quick name of ”grill” and it’d group all tabs and history under that. I could expand and collapse it and otherwise go back to other things tab groups.

thanhhaimai 5y ago
I may have misunderstood your request, but the feature you want (Tab group) was recently added: https://www.google.com/chrome/tips/#organize https://www.google.com/chrome/tips/#organize
ryftt_ 5y ago
This may be what you're looking for, I've been using it for a few weeks now and it's really useful. I use it in conjunction with Notion and they have been a power-duo. https://workona.com/ https://workona.com/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
j1elo 5y ago
I use the Tree Style Tab addon in Firefox for exactly that purpose. The addon doesn't have the concept of named groups, it is just an extension to organize tabs in a tree... but that's more than enough. Starting with a keyword search on the parent tab, all subsequent links are opened in child tabs that can be expanded / collapsed. When collapsed, the parent tab's title are the keywords, so it's a nice visual way to have the whole sub-tree "filed" into a single named entry. There are even a couple extras that allow me to long-middle-mouse-click a parent tab, and it unloads from memory the whole sub-tree. It's a pretty neat addon!
- nerdponx 5y ago
  It would be nice to have nodes in the tree that don't actually correspond to tabs though. For this specific use case of grouping.
  - hashhar 5y ago
    I've got the perfect gift for you - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tst-more-tree-commands/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tst-more-tree... A companion extension to TST by the original author.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  > The addon doesn't have the concept of named groups Actually, it has, but it's seems to lack UI-Integration for whatever reason. I use this bookmarklet for some years not to create a Group-Tab: javascript:(function(){window.open("ext+treestyletab:group?title=NewGroup&temporary=false")})(); To rename it, just click the title inside the group-tab.
thunderbong 5y ago
You should have a look at Vivaldi
- tssva 5y ago
  If you use a laptop my experience with Vivaldi is that under both Windows and Linux it is a giant battery drain. Also if you use a touchpad gestures for your browser navigation it currently doesn't support doing so.
rayrag 5y ago
OneTab will do something like this. If you click icon it will send all tabs into one group and if you name that group you can later add current tab, tabs on left or right or all opened tabs to this group. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo...
hs86 5y ago
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk... This Chrome extension allows you to name and annotate your entire browser session in a tree structure, and unlike TST on Firefox, it is not limited to a single window. In addition, it allows you to unload entire subtrees, and you can restore subtrees (or the whole session) on another computer.
- mmerlin 5y ago
  Tabs-outliner helps me zoom out and see the forest of currently opened tabs (and very handily lets them also be closed to save memory and reopened days or weeks later when required again). Also every month or two I dump all my mobile chrome tabs over to my desktop Chrome, so that I can close all tabs on my phone. i.e. History -> Tabs from other Devices -> Open All Then I backup, search, and group my URL history hierarchy in the the tree-view of Tabs-outliner
smichel17 5y ago
I thought I wanted this, too, and I've used every Firefox extension under the sun to try and achieve it, from the original panorama that was part of Firefox to tree style tabs to a few grouping extensions using containers. Turns out that almost anything which makes it less painful to keep open large numbers of tabs, also makes my tab count explode. I think I understand the reason, too: the easiest time to close a tab is immediately (after you're done using it). That's when you have the most context, so you are in the best position to say "I don't need this tab any more". The longer you wait, the longer you'll have to spend figuring out what that tab was about, so you can decide if it's safe to close. Or, of course, you could deal with that later... (And we know how it goes from here). There is utility in grouping tabs within a working session. Browser windows work pretty well for this, as long as your OS / window manager has a sane way to switch between multiple windows of the same application. There is also utility in being able to hide and restore groups you're using frequently but not constantly, like a side project you're working on at night or on weekends. Again, a window manager with a "workspaces" feature is clutch. Beyond that, there are rapidly diminishing returns. You can pull those features into your browser via extensions, of course, but I've found they require too much care to avoid the "hundreds of tabs" issue. I'd much rather have a tree style or grouped history than anything with state that I need to manually clean up.
lunarboy 5y ago
Workona allows you to switch between workspaces by name, but requires an account setup
carrolldunham 5y ago
Have you thought about doing this with bookmarks? I do exactly this that way and it's ...just great? You can nest folders within topics and while one's active you just click the star once to put the page in there. I think people usually admit their tab collecting is just a mental vicious-cycle, like hoarding, and I don't really see why reinforcing that behaviour with a 'better tab system' always wins out over simply.. using the well-designed system for doing what you're attempting - bookmarks. E: I should add when you come back to 'Grill research' you can click "open all" in that or one of the subfolders, so is that even slower than several dead tabs refreshing on view?

cloudking 5y ago

Smart idea to utilize the new grouping feature! One thing I didn't realize until recently, you can click on a tab group name to collapse/expand the whole group.

packetslave 5y ago

neat idea, but it doesn't respect pinned tabs, and the UI is buggy. uninstalled for now.

random12z1 5y ago
Who cares if you uninstalled it? The dev made something out of creativity. For you to think your usage matters is insane. Just give feedback or stay quite.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
  > Just give feedback or stay quite. Your comment is self-contradictory - this is Show HN and they just gave their feedback.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

FractalHQ 5y ago

Neat! Thus should be a native feature. Speaking of should-be features, ever since groups came out I’ve wanted the ability to save and load named groups.

12ian34 5y ago

A very similar feature comes out of the box with Vivaldi[0], which I have been trying out recently. Whilst I'm particularly enjoying all the configurability so far, it's too early for me to recommend it. [0]: https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tabs/tab-stacks/#Create_a_new_Tab_Stack https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tabs/tab-stacks/#Create_a_n... -> "Option 3|4"

nabaraz 5y ago
What is the appeal of Vivaldi browser? I know it is started by Opera's CEO but it is closed-source (only the chromium part is open-source). The only feature I like is tab split view. Last i tried, it was pretty buggy on video sites.
- ponyous 5y ago
  Video handling definitely got better in last 6 months. > What is the appeal of Vivaldi browser It's browser made for power users. Bunch of features built in with a lot of flexibility. Few of my favorites: Vertical Tabs, "Stack tabs by host" (this extension practically), Hibernating background tabs.
  - DrammBA 5y ago
    Two of your 3 favorites are not unique to Vivaldi, is there any other feature worth the switch besides "Stack tabs by host"?
    - ponyous 5y ago
      Even stack tabs by host is not unique with this extension is it? :) It's made for power users as I said, for example you can change the right click menu on the tab bar and have only things you care about in there instead of 1000 options. I bet there are other "unique" features, but that's not the point. If you are happy with chrome keep using it.
      - DrammBA 5y ago

weaksauce 5y ago

neat webext but I'm curious why no firefox release? after a brief perusal of the code it doesn't look like the code has any glaring incompatibilities.

lolinder 5y ago
It looks like this utilizes Chrome's tab groups, which Firefox doesn't have.
- mdaniel 5y ago
  I wonder if tab reordering is possible, creating pseudo-groups by merely placing all related ones next to each other. Then shift-clicking them could enable tearing off a new window containing all related tabs, which I 100% get isn't the same, but might not be totally worthless, either
  - weaksauce 5y ago
    tab reordering would be possible but the shift-clicking on the tab group would have to be some other mechanism like a context menu action or something along those lines.
    - mdaniel 5y ago
      Oh, apologies, I meant the _user_ would be responsible for shift-clicking and tearing off those tabs; I haven't ever seen an extension that was able to do those kind of wholistic browser operations
      - weaksauce 5y ago
        ah i see... yeah an extension could theoretically do it but it would be along the lines of right click on a tab and then select a context menu action that the extension installs that would then do something like "break this group off into a new window"... fairly trivial to implement but I don't think it exists right now.

alan_n 5y ago

Interesting, but would not really use it unless it could auto group by url. I don't want to have to set things up. Like if I have more than X tabs for a site, group them automatically. This would be great when debugging/learning and I have 20-30 tabs open and more than half might be to one new site that contains the docs for x thing I'm doing/learning.

nikkwong 5y ago
That would be an awesome feature for this plugin to include. Hoping they add it. I'm using this plugin now and it's very pleasant.

kvothe_ 5y ago

well done!

solarkraft 5y ago

Is “open source” really a feature for browser extensions? I don’t think I’d ever use a proprietary one.

mdaniel 5y ago
_Cries in 1Password land_ They've done a good job publishing specs for their on-disk formats, but thus far I've never seen anything for their extensions. Ironically, it's a tiny bit easier now that their in-browser uses the same API as does the "thick" client, but (AFAIK) that API still needs to be fully reversed enough to implement a separate extension Yeah, yeah, I know, "but bitwarden!" I just haven't expended the energy to stand up my own password management infra in order to compare the features
- weaksauce 5y ago
  if you trust 1password to host your passwords do you not trust bitwarden? it's free for personal use across all your devices and opensource. if it were free without anyone paying for it I'd be a bit more worried about it but since there are paying tiers I think they are more reputable. That said the interface on the client doesn't have the best UX.

killjoywashere 5y ago

What I really want is for my tab groups to sync across devices. I have to use a bunch of computers for various things (I have a half-dozen laptops tethered to their own VPNs) but they all exist for me to do work. News bulletin: it is impossible for me to segregate my work perfectly across 5 organizations. I can sync my tabs, but what I really need these days is a way to sync my tab groups.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> it is impossible for me to segregate my work perfectly across 5 organizations I used to have 3 different browsers for 3 organizations. They all had same websites usually e.g. Email, social media sites for each organization respectively. Then I had another browser like FF Developer Edition for development, One more for Education and another in VM which gets invoked when needed for checking out URLs from unknown people. I'm power-conscious, So I usually buy laptops with low-TDP (15W) CPUs but capable of running at least 32GB Memory for my aforementioned browser requirements. I run tasks requiring more compute power on cloud. Lately I've limited by browsers to 3(Main/Development/VM), invoke 1 more when necessary. I was able to reduce the browsers by Using desktop Mail client with multiple accounts, adding multiple accounts to Twitter web, Automated posting to social media using Ayrshare (Stopped operating social media accounts which doesn't support it).
- MereInterest 5y ago
  Does Firefox not support multiple profiles anymore? I would have thought that this would be the natural solution, to have a different profile for each rather than a different browser.
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    It does, I used different browsers for memory reasons as I needed them only occasionally and not open all the time.
- weaksauce 5y ago
  have you tried using multi-account containers? it's perfectly suited for segregating different identities like work/bank/shopping/social/whatever all in the same browser instance. that plus temporary containers for "privateish" windows is awesome. I am not sure why that's not installed by default if it's not as it is really great. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

Wronnay 5y ago

What is the difference to the other extensions like this? Like https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mark-tab-manager/filgplhfalgafolkffphilkgckdgnona https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mark-tab-manager/f...

mcint 5y ago

Playing some fun games with version numbers. 6.4.0 with initial commit 2 months ago.