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Chrome tab manager for designers

You are three client projects deep and each one is its own coloured Chrome tab group: the orange group is a fintech rebrand — fourteen Dribbble and Behance references, two Figma files, the brand brief in Google Docs; the teal group is a packaging job with type specimens and a colour chart; the purple group is a landing page with competitor screenshots and a moodboard. A Chrome tab manager for designers has to treat each of those groups as a living mood board, because the afternoon a client calls about the packaging job you switch windows, and the references you spent a morning narrowing down are one accidental window-close away from gone. Chrome's own reopen brings back recent tabs but forgets which group each belonged to, so you get a flat strip instead of the per-project boards you built. Tabwell snapshots the whole window with each tab's group assignment — group name, colour, and collapsed state read through the chrome.tabGroups API — and writes them all back on restore, so a finished moodboard comes back exactly as you arranged it. The record lives in local IndexedDB on your device, so a Chrome update or a crash never scatters the references.

The designer's working set is the mood boards, not the tabs

When you carry several client projects at once, the unit of work is the coloured group, not the individual tab. The orange group is one rebrand's references and Figma files, the teal group is the packaging type specimens, the purple group is a landing page's competitor screenshots. Lose the grouping and you have not lost twenty tabs — you have lost the mood board that told you which reference belonged to which project. That is why tab management for UI designers has to preserve group structure to be worth anything, and why Chrome's flat reopen leaves you reassembling each board by hand.

How Tabwell maps onto a multi-project design workflow

Tabwell fits the way you already group references by project rather than asking you to move them into a new tool:

  • Snapshot each per-project group as a mood board with full fidelity. A snapshot is a JSON record of each window, each tab's title and URL, and each tab's group assignment with the group name, colour, and collapsed flag. Restore rebuilds those groups through chrome.tabGroups, so a colour-coded board comes back in the same colour and collapsed exactly as you arranged it.
  • Auto-snapshot catches the references before a crash takes them. Tabwell writes a snapshot on browser exit and on a timer — every 60 minutes on Free, every 5 minutes on Pro — so the morning you spent narrowing fourteen Dribbble references down to three survives a Chrome update or a crash. The next launch offers to restore whatever was open.
  • Archive a delivered project, restore it when the client comes back. When a job ships, keep its snapshot; months later, when the client asks for a round-two revision, restore that one snapshot to bring the full board — references, Figma links, and brief — back as a group instead of rebuilding it from a browser history search.

Recover a board after a crash or an accidental close

The reference set you narrowed down all morning is the expensive part, and it is the part Chrome loses first. Tabwell's auto-snapshot-on-exit means the last arrangement is already on disk when Chrome relaunches, and full-text search — a Pro feature that indexes the title and URL of every saved tab — lets you type a project name, a domain like figma.com, or a reference site to reach the board you saved weeks ago. It is a literal substring match over titles and URLs; it does not read page contents and the tab does not need to be open. The guide on restoring Chrome tabs after a crash walks the restore flow, the guide on recovering closed tabs covers the accidental-close case, and the guide on saving tab groups in Chrome covers capturing a group's colour and collapsed state. This page does not re-teach those steps; it shows why they matter when each group is a mood board you cannot rebuild from memory.

Free vs Pro for a design workload

Every install from the Chrome Web Store starts with a 14-day Pro trial, no credit card. After it, the Free tier keeps your latest 5 snapshots with manual save and restore, JSON export for backup, and a 60-minute auto-snapshot. A designer carrying several projects usually wants more history than five boards, plus a way to search them: Pro lifts the cap to unlimited, adds full-text search across every saved tab's title and URL, and tightens the auto-snapshot to every 5 minutes. Pricing is $3.99/month, $29/year, $59 one-time, or $19 one-time for the first 1,000 Founders buyers, with a 30-day refund.

FAQ

Do my colour-coded tab groups survive a restore?

Yes. A snapshot stores each tab's group assignment with the group name, colour, and collapsed state, read through the chrome.tabGroups API. On restore Tabwell rebuilds those groups rather than dropping every tab into a flat list, so a per-project mood board comes back in its original colour and collapsed. This is the difference from Chrome's native reopen, which forgets group membership.

Can I recover a mood board after I accidentally close the window?

Yes. Tabwell auto-snapshots on browser exit and on a timer, so the last arrangement is already saved when Chrome relaunches. The next launch offers to restore whatever was open, rebuilding each coloured group through chrome.tabGroups. The auto-snapshot runs every 60 minutes on Free and every 5 minutes on Pro.

Does Tabwell handle several projects and windows open at once?

Yes. A single snapshot captures every open window with all of its coloured groups, so the projects you have open across multiple windows are saved together. You can restore the whole working set at once, or archive one project's snapshot and restore it on its own later. Each restore rebuilds the original window layout and tab groups.

Can I find an old project's references by keyword?

Yes, with Pro. Tabwell indexes the title and URL of every saved tab for full-text search, so a project name, a domain like figma.com, or a reference site matches the snapshot that held that board. It is a literal substring match over titles and URLs, not a search of page contents, and the tab does not need to be open. On the Free tier only the latest 5 snapshots are kept and search is not included.

Where are my saved sessions stored, and do they leave my device?

Snapshots are stored locally in IndexedDB on your device via dexie. Tab URLs and titles never leave the device; the only network call is to Polar for license verification, which carries no tab data. There is no account or email required to use the extension.

Is full-text search free, and what does Pro cost?

Full-text search and unlimited snapshots are Pro features, available during the 14-day trial every install starts with. After the trial the Free tier keeps the latest 5 snapshots with manual save, restore, and JSON export. Pro is $3.99/month, $29/year, $59 one-time, or $19 one-time for the first 1,000 Founders buyers, with a 30-day refund.

Does Tabwell require Chrome 114 or later?

Yes. Chrome 114 is the minimum supported version because Tabwell uses the chrome.sidePanel API introduced there, alongside chrome.tabs and chrome.tabGroups. Edge and other Chromium browsers may work but are not officially supported. Firefox and Safari are not supported.