Tabli is an advanced tab manager for Google Chrome

Martin Brinkmann
Feb 11, 2016
Google Chrome
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12

Tabli is a free browser extension for Google Chrome and compatible web browsers that improves the tab management in several significant ways.

One of the main limitations of Google Chrome is the browser's non-scrolling tab bar. The more tabs you open in a browser window, the less information about each open tab is displayed by the Chrome browser.

Eventually, all you get are very small tabs that don't show text or site favicons at all making it nearly impossible to identify open websites in the browser.

While you can resolve the issue by limiting the number of tabs open at any given time, or by using multiple browser windows, most tab-heavy Chrome users help themselves by installing browser extensions that improve tab management.

Tabli

Chrome's extension APIs don't allow add-ons to manipulate the browser interface, and the majority of tab management solutions for Chrome use icon-based management instead.

tabli tab manager chrome

Tabli is a new extension for Chrome that does the same. It adds an icon to Chrome's toolbar that you can click on to display all open tabs in the current and other open windows.

A click jumps directly to any of the open tabs, and there is also an option to close tabs directly from the menu.

A search at the top provides you with options to find open websites quickly. This can be very useful if lots of tabs are open as space for the display is limited.

There is more to the extension than that though. If you like to use the keyboard, you will find several new keyboard shortcuts added to Chrome by the extension that improve tab and window handling.

The main shortcut is Ctrl-. which opens the Tabli popup. Once the popup is open, you may use up and down arrow keys, or Ctrl-up or Ctrl-down to navigate between tabs or windows that are open.

Enter jumps to the selection, and Esc closes the popup window again.

Another interesting feature is the ability to save windows and tabs. This works similar to Firefox's Tab Groups feature, allowing you to save and restore windows at any time.

To save a window, and all tabs it contains, simply open the Tabli menu in Chrome, hover over the window and check the box that appears next to its title.

Saved windows can be closed, and Tabli will display them the next time you launch its interface under "saved closed windows" from where they can be opened again.

The feature is useful if you use a specific set of websites at times, but not all the time. Maybe you require some for work, entertainment or shopping. Using the save window feature, you could save them and open them only when you need to access them.

You reduce the memory that Chrome requires to run if you close tabs that you don't need at that point in time.

Closing Words

Tabli does not reinvent the wheel, but it is a well designed tab management extension for the Chrome browser that improves how you work with tabs in it significantly.

It is of little use to Chrome users who have only a handful of tabs open in the browser at any given time though.

Now You: Do you use tab management extensions?

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3.5 based on 8 votes
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Tabli
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Comments

  1. TK said on August 1, 2020 at 2:46 am
    Reply

    Thanks for letting us know about Tabli… makes new chrome based MS Edge usable again with currently 97 tabs open and Comodo Dragon Chrome fork too. Surprising google are so far behind the other browsers when it comes to handling more tabs than fit usefully in the current sized window… They are probably too busy designing ways to monetise or private data.

  2. Anonymous said on April 19, 2016 at 12:56 am
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    I’ll second Tab Outliner and Session Buddy. Give me most of what I got from TMP, and with Tab Outliner, a little more in some respects.

  3. silat said on February 14, 2016 at 10:01 am
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    One Tab
    Tab Outliner
    Session Buddy
    Are what I use when in Chrome.
    Not perfect but better than nothing.

  4. S2015 said on February 11, 2016 at 11:22 pm
    Reply

    Personally, you can consider running two or more windows of Chrome, if you have to open multiple or many pages at the same time. to do so, you simply press your left click then drag the target page.

  5. Hans van Meteren said on February 11, 2016 at 10:32 pm
    Reply

    I just wanted a better way to fix tabs that I use the most so that I don’t have to open them again and again and they don’t close when I don’t want them to. Does Chrome or Firefox offer that?

    1. Kurt Hansen said on July 25, 2017 at 1:43 am
      Reply

      you can right click on a Chrome tab and Pin it. it will re-open next time.

  6. Dan82 said on February 11, 2016 at 4:35 pm
    Reply

    Most people don’t need an advanced tab management in their browser – and a multi-row tab bar is definitely part of that – but those that do will never be happy with a half-baked method as this one. Nice try, just like all those other tab management “solutions” for Chromium based browsers, but they all fail in usability.

    Why would I ever want to lower myself to use an uncomfortable system such as this, when other browsers offer a functioning tab-bar instead? Google isn’t interested in doing anything but the minimum about their browser’s interface, while other Chromium-based browsers haven’t improved their own interfaces enough. I think only qupZilla offers multi-row tabs, or am I wrong about that browser too? Anyway, it wouldn’t be a solution, since it doesn’t support browser extensions and is quite limited in its use because of that.

    I’m still counting on Vivaldi, a browser which seems to have collected all those good things Opera left behind in their jump from versions 12 to 15. It’s not there yet and probably won’t be for quite a while, but their browser interface is flexible enough that a large number of interface customizations are not only theoretically but also practically possible. They only need to be implemented.

  7. yoav said on February 11, 2016 at 1:26 pm
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    I find it too hard to work without tab mix plus, and there’s nothing remotely close to that for chrome

    1. Donkeyfumbler said on February 11, 2016 at 5:11 pm
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      Me too – it’s the biggest thing keeping me on Firefox (maybe the only thing other than a vague distrust of Google)

      1. Anonymous said on August 31, 2017 at 7:28 pm
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        Try Pale Moon. I’ve switched. Limited extension are available, but Tab Mix Plus is one available.

      2. Donkeybuncher said on February 19, 2017 at 9:31 pm
        Reply

        second that, had it w Firefox

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on February 11, 2016 at 1:31 pm
      Reply

      Yeah the only tab management extensions you get are like Tabli.

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