View tab previews, save and restore sessions with the Tabby - Window & Tab Manager extension for Firefox

Ashwin
Jul 14, 2020
Firefox, Firefox add-ons
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6

Navigating through browser tabs without the help of some extension or the other can be rather difficult. Forget scrolling through the tab bar, using a vertical scrollable list can be a lot faster.

View tab previews, save and restore sessions with the Tabby - Window & Tab Manager extension for Firefox

Tabby - Window & Tab Manager makes that possible. The extension puts a colorful three-line icon on the toolbar, clicking on it opens its interface.

This pop-up window has two panes: the list on the right displays all tabs that are/were opened in the current window. Mouse over a tab and a visual preview of the page is displayed on the left pane. This helps in finding the right tab way simpler than switching from tab-to-tab. The preview also contains the full title and URL of the tab, and you can copy it without switching the focus to the tab.

Tabby tab preview

Speaking of which, click on a tab to switch to it. Drag and drop tabs to rearrange their order. Each tab has its title and favicon, but you will notice two more buttons next to tabs. Clicking on the x button closes a tab. Hit the Pin icon to send the tab to the top of the list, the add-on uses Firefox's pin function for this.

The preview loads instantly if the tab is currently loaded in the browser, if it isn't though, the preview takes a few seconds to appear as the add-on fetches the content in the background. If the list of tabs is too long, you can filter the view by entering the name of the website in the search box. Hit enter to open the highlighted tab.

Right-click on a tab and select the "Send tab to" menu option to move it to a different window. This also works from the page context menu in the browser. Right-click on the Window's name in the Tabby popup interface, to rename it.

Tabby - send tab to

Tabby - Window & Tab Manager can save websites for later. Hit the button next to the Search box to save the tabs in the current window. To load the "window's session", click on the restore button. The add-on opens a new tab to restore the windows. It supports multiple windows as well, i.e., tab sessions from multiple windows can be saved and restored. The restoration process works even after you have closed each window, and restarted the browser several times.

Resize the extension's pop-up window from its options page. You may toggles for the tab preview, tab details, search in URLs per your requirements.

Tabby Options

Tabby supports keyboard shortcuts for switching to the last used tab or window, and to open the pop-up interface. Select a tab and hold down the left mouse button, and press P to pin it,  M to mute it. The extension does not support the browser's tab right-click menu, and instead displays the default context menu when you right-click on a tab in the pop-up view. This is somewhat odd for a tab manager add-on.

Tabby was among Mozilla's Firefox Quantum Extensions Challenge finalists, though it eventually lost the contest. This is an open source extension. It should not to be confused with Tabby2, which was once a popular add-on.

Summary
software image
Author Rating
1star1star1star1stargray
5 based on 2 votes
Software Name
Tabby - Window & Tab Manager
Operating System
Firefox
Software Category
Internet
Price
Free
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Comments

  1. foromir said on July 25, 2020 at 8:42 pm
    Reply

    There was a somewhat native sidebar tabs addon for Firefox in the past 2 years. Any idea what it might have been? The switcher icon in the taskbar followed the e.g. ‘Synced tabs’ look perfectly.

    1. MD said on July 29, 2020 at 3:23 am
      Reply
  2. M Ega said on July 19, 2020 at 9:59 am
    Reply

    @STECH
    v2.1 one of the new features.
    “And for Firefox Multi-Account Containers users out there, full container integration has been added!”

    1. STECH said on July 19, 2020 at 11:49 pm
      Reply

      Thank you very much. Testing….

  3. STECH said on July 17, 2020 at 8:01 am
    Reply

    Does this extension offer integration with Multi-account container? (i.e. does it restore tabs/sessions respecting containers for each tab? If no, there is an extension that does that?

  4. KERR said on July 15, 2020 at 1:28 pm
    Reply

    This has a lot of potential, it has a github too for suggestions/bug reports. Author is responsive 👍

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