Tab Shelf

v2025.1.1

New features

• Customizable Action Bar buttons and added a 'Scroll to bottom' button.

Changes

• Overhauled the Grouping Rules Engine to be more performant and significantly less resource intensive.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where grouping rules create multiple instances of tab groups when starting Tab Shelf in a window which already has tabs affected by grouping rules.
• Fixed an issue with multiple selected tab groups are not moved when selecting a group in the quick-select menu.
• Fixed an issue where window controls for other windows with pinned tabs are not appearing when filtering by all windows.

Known issues

• Tab Shelf on Microsoft Edge is stuck in dark mode although Edge is using a light theme.

v2025.1.0

New features

• Added the option to view and navigate between tabs in all windows (accessible by going to the window selector menu and selecting 'All windows').
• Added duplicate tab detection. Duplicate tabs will not be automatically closed, but a button will appear in the top toolbar to allow you to quickly filter your tab list to only show duplicate tabs. This lets you manually review your duplicate tabs before closing them (some web apps may display different content or have a different context per tab, but may have the same URL).
• Added tab context menu sub-menus:
  • Sub-menu to sleep tabs below or above the selected tab, or all other tabs.
  • Moved tab closing options under a sub-menu. Options to close all tabs above or below the selected tab have also been added.
  • Quick-select a group (in the current window) to move a tab to.
• Added a tab context menu option to force a tab to stay awake (block auto-sleep).

Changes

• Overhauled tab filter menu with updated filtering options.
• Grouping rules can now be collapsed/folded in the grouping rules menu.
• A crescent moon indicator icon is now shown next to a tab group name if all tabs under it are sleeping/inactive.
• Tab group colors are now shown in the tab grouping menu.
• Allow the localhost domain to be added to grouping rules.

Bug fixes

• Removed an outdated warning about Saved Tab Groups not being supported.
• Fixed an issue where newly added sites in rules were not appearing.

Known issues

• Tab Shelf on Microsoft Edge is stuck in dark mode although Edge is using a light theme.

v2024.5.0

New features

• Save tab groups and windows (including menu to manage saved tab groups and windows).
• New tab button below the last tab in the tab list (optional).
• Click on the active tab to switch back to the last active tab (optional).

v2024.4.1

Improvements

• Revert change that hid the Action Bar buttons when the cursor moves away from the side panel. All Action Bar buttons will now always be shown by default. Button and Action Bar background hiding can be re-enabled in the settings menu under the Appearance options. The size of the Action Bar buttons could also be customized.

v2024.4.0

New features

• Redesigned action bar (formerly known as the bottom bar).
  • The New Tab and Back To Top buttons will always be visible. Buttons to jump to the active tab, selection mode, and to sleep all unfocused tabs will only be visible when your cursor hovers over the side panel.
  • Added more visible tooltips for all buttons in the action bar.
• Added tab context menu option to group tabs by hostname.
• Added bookmarking for tab groups and windows:
  • Added tab group context menu option to bookmark the tab group.
  • Added new button to bookmark all tabs in a window (in the window filter menu).
  • See the 'All Bookmarks' folder in your bookmarks bar for the bookmarked tab groups and windows. Bookmarked tab groups and windows will be manageable from within Tab Shelf in a future update.
• Added new buttons to tab group headers for creating a new tab in the group and bookmarking the group. These buttons are disabled by default.
• Added a status bar to show the tab count in the current window. This shows the number of selected tabs if in selection mode. This status bar is disabled by default.

Improvements

• Default side panel toggle keyboard shortcut has been changed from 'Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + P' to 'Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + O' to avoid clashing with keyboard shortcuts in Google Docs and other productivity web apps.
• Added filter buttons in the settings menu to filter settings by category.
• Added context menu customization in the settings menu.
• Added settings option to make grouping rules aggressive (forcibly regroup a tab that's already in another group).
• Grouping rules settings have been moved into the main settings menu.
• Overhauled synced settings and grouping rules storage management (under the hood).

Bug fixes

• Resolved issue where some toggle settings were constantly being toggled on and off by itself after changing its value.
• Resolved excessive CPU and memory usage issue during account sync.
• Resolved excessive grouping rule executions (do not run rules on tabs that are already known to not have a rule for it).

v2024.3.9

Improvements

• Selecting and grouping tabs now creates the tab group wherever the first selected tab is.
• Added a shortcut to the side panel placement settings in the browser settings.

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue where selected tabs were deselected on their own.

v2024.3.8

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue where muted audio indicator appears for all tabs except for muted tabs when muting a tab.

v2024.3.7

Improvements

• Significant performance improvements for tab event handling and drag-and-drop.

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue that caused the window filter to switch to the last active window instead of the current window when switching window focus.

Deprecated features

• Deprecated scroll position restoration. When opening Tab Shelf, the tab list will now automatically scroll to the active tab.

v2024.3.6

Bug fixes

• Replace default keyboard shortcut for 'Move tab to...' menu (Ctrl/CMd+Shift+I) to prevent clash with formatting keyboard shortcuts in productivity web apps. The new default keyboard shortcut is Alt+M (you may need to manually change this if you had v2024.3.5 previously installed).

v2024.3.5

New features

• Keyboard shortcut (Ctrl/Cmd + I) to open the 'Move tab to...' menu for the current active tab.
• Keyboard shortcut (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Space) to trigger tab selection mode.
• Discarded/sleeping tab will now show a 'Wake tab' option in place of 'Sleep tab' when hovering over it in the list (coffee mug icon instead of the crescent icon) or in the tab's context menu.
• Even more compact pinned tabs mode (Appearance --> 'Reduce spacing in pinned tabs compact view.').
• Auto-hide toolbars mode to hide toolbars when cursor is not in the side panel (Behavior --> 'Auto-hide toolbars when cursor is not in side panel.').

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue where the color selection in the 'Create tab group' menu is not respected.
• Fixed missing translations for 'Save' button for text field options in the Settings menu.
• Fixed missing translations for 'Tab Control Buttons' and 'Tab Group Header Buttons' group titles in the Settings menu.

v2024.3.4

Improvements

• Make tab group names more visible for lighter custom tab group colors.

Bug fixes

• Fix custom tab group color mapping persistence across sessions (e.g. rebooting after an update). If a group is not restored in a month, the custom tab group color mapping will be expired (base browser tab group colors would be used instead).

v2024.3.3

Tab Shelf 2024.3.3 features an overhauled onboarding experience for new users. It's designed to hand-hold users through the process of setting up Tab Shelf and educates users on its responsible permissions usage.

New features

• Added Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Hungarian as language options.

Improvements

• Welcome/Onboarding page has been completely redesigned with greater emphasis on privacy information.
• What's New page has been moved into the side panel as a pop-up modal. This will be less disruptive to your session.
• Settings and grouping rules sync now attempts to save new changes immediately.
• Added a note in the Settings modal on how the browser control's account syncing frequency, not Tab Shelf.
• Privacy and permissions (including the new nutrition facts sheet) can now be seen directly within Tab Shelf via the Settings modal.
• Uninstalling Tab Shelf will now show an uninstall survey. Filling it out is optional, but it would help greatly with figuring out issues that users don't usually report.
• Added links to the feedback form and extensions store pages to encourage users to submit more feedback and reviews.
• Sleep option in tab context menu will now be disabled if the tab is already put to sleep/discarded.

Bug fixes

• Grouping rules execution should no longer cause the main Chrome/Edge process to spin up to 100% CPU usage.
• Grouping rules execution should now be triggered when moving tabs out of tab groups.
• Grouping rules execution should now be triggered when dragging and dropping tabs within a window or between windows.
• Bookmarks and open sites selector in Grouping Rules should now close when clicking on the 'Add' button.
• Debouncing method used to prevent grouping rules from executing after every tab event. This should reduce CPU usage and prevent multiple identical tab groups from being created when restoring a closed session.
• Selecting a bookmarks folder in the bookmarks selector in Grouping Rules should now exclude already-included sites.
• When using the 'Move tabs to...' option from the tab context menu, selecting the option to move tabs to a new window and create a new group should no longer move the tabs first. The new group information would need to be filled in and confirmed before the tabs are moved.
• Fix issue with language picker in Welcome page not being able to set a language without the side panel open.

v2024.3.2

Improvements

• Reliance on permissions for the clipboard and user identity have been removed. Syncing options will now be toggle-able by all users regardless of login state.

v2024.3.1

Please note that this release was in fact a re-release of version 2024.2.2. Due to user feedback, version 2024.3.0 was rolled-back while changes were made to rectify issues identified by users.

v2024.3.0

New features

• Ability to import/export settings and grouping rules.
• Ability to sync settings and grouping rules via your browser sync account.
• Regular expression and wildcard support for grouping rules.
• Add sites to a grouping rule from your bookmarks and open tabs.

Improvements

• Tabs are now tinted with the color of the tab group they belong to. This could be disabled in settings.
• Improved visibility of the tab group visibility toggle for tab groups without a name.
• Update availability message will now appear if a new version of Tab Shelf is available (frequency of checks depends on your browser).
• Grouping rule creation and editing has been redesigned to be more streamlined.
• Added a "Open Tab Shelf" button in the Welcome page.

Bug fixes

• When compact pinned tabs are enabled, the favicon was not shown if favicons were disabled for the tab list. This has been fixed to always show favicons even if favicons are disabled.
• Button to jump to the current active tab previously changed the window filter to whichever window had the last active tab. This has been fixed to always show the active tab in the current window.
• Language picker was previously not visible in the Welcome page to users with a fresh install of Tab Shelf.

v2024.2.2

Improvements

• Caching throughout Tab Shelf has been rewritten to prevent unnecessary recalculations, filtering, etc. This makes navigating around Tab Shelf significantly snappier and less CPU intensive.
• Lazy loading of components prevents non-visible or hidden sections of Tab Shelf from loading when not in use. This reduces memory usage.

v2024.2.1

Improvements

• Ask for confirmation when clicking on the 'Reset settings' button.
• Improved automatic pinned tabs column sizing.
• Add Ko-fi donation buttons.

Bug fixes

• Optimize settings refresh for multiple instances of Tab Shelf open on multiple windows.
• Add missing translations for rule deletion confirmation dialog.

v2024.2.0

New features

• Tab Shelf is now available in 13 languages - English, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean, Malay, Indonesian, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Thai.

v2024.1.2

Bug fixes

• Prevent Tab Shelf from crashing when the browser fails to resolve the URL of a link opened in a new tab.
• Fix visibility of delete domain button in the grouping rule form.

v2024.1.1

Bug fixes

• Pinned tabs should not be closed when selecting "Close other tabs" in the context menu.
• Pinned tabs should be ignored by grouping rules.
• Filtering tabs by window should not constantly revert back to the last selected window.
• Context menus for pinned tabs should appear above the fade effect at the bottom of lists.
• Context menu items for pinned tabs have square corners when they should match the style of menu items for non-pinned tabs.

v2024.1.0

New features

• Auto-grouping tabs based on hostname rules.
• Customizable pop-up buttons for tabs and tab group headers.
• Improved auto-resizing of pinned tabs.
• Default keyboard shortcut to toggle the Tab Shelf panel (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + P).
• Option to close all tabs above or below a selected tab.
• Selecting tabs in the horizontal tab bar now syncs with tab selection in Tab Shelf.
• New color picker replaces the dropdown accent color picker in settings.

Bug fixes

• More responsive favicon / tab icon refreshing.
• Tab group colors are correctly restored when reloading sessions after browser updates.

Deprecated features

• Pop-up notifications have been removed.

v2023.5.2

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue with hover tab action for pinning tabs not working.

v2023.5.1

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue with custom tab group colors not being saved correctly (it always reverted to the related default tab group colors).
• Fixed issue with some site favicons not appearing on tabs.
• Fixed issue with tab context menu items appearing to bleed beyond the menu borders on hover.

v2023.5.0

New features

• 20 new tab group color options (replacing the default 9 tab group options). The colors shown in Tab Shelf will be mapped as closely as possible to one of the available 9 tab group colors available for the tab bar.
• 20 accent colors (same as the new tab group colors) options for Tab Shelf to better match your Chrome theme (needs to be manually changed).
• Added "Reload" and "Close other tabs" options to context menu.
• New context menu options to open a new tab above or below a tab group when right-clicking on a tab inside a tab group. This option is disabled by default.

Improvements

• Tab drag-and-drop are now more consistent and reliable.
• Context menus will show the color of the tab group as the border color.
• Changing the tab group color now is now done via a small popup menu rather than a modal window.
• Tab group creation modal window has been re-organised to emphasise the "Create" button. Pressing the Escape key in the title text field cancels the tab group creation, and pressing Enter will create the group.

Bug fixes

• Fixed move to new window and create new group in window options in "Move tab(s) to..." menu option. Previously selected tabs were not being moved to new windows.
• Removed optional deprecated static context menu (used to be shown at the bottom when in edit/selection mode).
• Removed settings options for hiding tab filtering option and for hiding search.

v2023.4.1

Bug fixes

• Move CPU spike minimization optimizations behind a feature toggle and disable by default.

v2023.4.0

New features

• Right-clicking tabs and tab group headers now brings up a context menu to let you mute, pin, sleep, and move tabs, amongst many other options. This replaces the old fixed menu seen in edit mode. This old menu and 'right-click to select' behavior could be re-enabled in the settings.
• Redesigned compact mode (select 'Hide tab URLs' in the settings).

Improvements

• Significant performance improvements with reduced memory usage (halved in some cases) and reduced CPU usage spiking during scrolling.
• Drag-and-drop across windows is now instant. It no longer requires you to wait until the target window comes into focus.

Bug fixes

• Tab filter modal now shows the correct tab count for other groups when already filtering by a group.
• Dropping a tab on an empty space in the pinned tabs area should pin the dropped tab.

v2023.3.3

Improvements

• Add setting to open dropped links in new background tab instead of focusing immediately.
• Reorder edit mode toolbar and emphasise "Done" button.
• Animate edit mode indicator (barberpole).

Bug fixes

• Always show favicons for pinned tabs in compact pinned tab mode when tab favicons are disabled.

v2023.3.2

Improvements

• Drag-and-drop tabs into compact pinned tabs area will now pin tabs. This previously required non-pinned tabs to be dropped on the pinned tab itself.

Bug fixes

• Fix misaligned height of pinned audible tabs (compared to non-audible tabs showing standard favicons).
• Fix excessive display of loading indicator when moving tabs within window.
• Fix tab group collapsed state syncing when closing and re-opening Tab Shelf.

v2023.3.1

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue where a selection of tabs being dragged to another window only moves the first/dragged tab.
• Fixed issue where when a tab or tab group being dropped in the spacer below the tab list doesn't move the tabs/tab groups.
• Fixed issue where tab filter doesn't clear when tab search is emptied (by backspacing all text).
• Fixed visual glitch where tabs at the bottom of the visible viewport aren't rendered when entering edit mode.
• Added loading indicator when moving tabs or tab groups (larger tab groups will take longer to move, so it should only appear for these).

v2023.3.0

New features

• Multi-window support
  • Ability to filter tab list by window (and switch to other windows by clicking on tabs).
  • Ability to drag-and-drop tabs and tab groups between different windows.
  • Drag-and-drop tabs to the window switcher to trigger the tab mover window.
• Tab groups can now be collapsed from within the tab list.
  • Tab group titles and colors are now editable from within the tab list itself.
• Pinned tabs are now shown in a compact grid view by default (title, URL, and tab actions hidden). This view could be disabled in the settings.
• Filter-by-audible shortcut in the top bar when tabs have audio playing.

Bug fixes and improvements

• Fix issue with double-clicking on first tab not creating new tab after the first tab.
• Fix issue with search not being triggered during initial typing.
• Fix performance issue caused by excessive event listener re-assignments.
• Only render visible tab list items.

v2023.2.0

General

• Switch to year + major release format for version numbers. (e.g. {year}.{release})

Tab List

• Overhaul tab group selection menu.
• Filter tabs by media playing state.
• Filter tabs by domain/hostname.
• Button to jump to tab group with active tab.
• Dragging and dropping tabs over pinned tabs will pin the dropped tab.
• Dragging and dropping tabs at end of list will move tabs to the end.
• Edit mode menu replaced with context-style menu.
• Select/Deselect All button in edit mode.

Settings

• Use dark mode for incognito windows.
• Set theme regardless of system color scheme.
• Set custom font family.
• Use default system font as default font family.
• Toggle visibility of tab favicons and URLs.
• Group settings by topic.

Bug fixes

• Disable trackpad gestures (back/forward) within Tab Shelf view.
• Fix tabs losing group association when moving them in bulk.
• Reset Settings should reload stored settings.
• Disable context menu for buttons and dropdown selectors.

v0.1.1

• Ability to create new tab groups from selection. This includes being able to give the group a name and color at the time of creation.
• Relax tab search rules to allow for broader range of results.