Reviews for Tab Stash
Tab Stash by Josh Berry
162 reviews
- by Andriy, 9 months agoRated 5 out of 5
- by Firefox user 14331875, 9 months agoRated 5 out of 5
- by Firefox user 13462421, 9 months agoRated 5 out of 5
- by harl windwolf, 9 months agoRated 4 out of 5I was hoping for this to work and act (even) more like an alternative to tab groups / panorama view, except with bookmarks instead of actual tabs (mainly to avoid having to care about memory and cpu usage). Kind of like OneTab, but with a more intuitive interface.
That's not quite where Tab Stash is yet (from my position). It needs more options to customize the stashes/directories or how they're represented on the list/tab. And more transparency/feedback as to where the most recently stashed tabs go and how they can be handled from there (safely). Also, more keyboard shortcuts.
It doesn't work too well with Tree Style Tab (yet), which doesn't reuse the native tabs, so it's only affected by Tab Stash to a certain degree (including unloaded/hidden ones that reappear on TST). As it is now, Tab Stash can't be a replacement for TST for me, because I don't like the native tabs anyway and Tab Stash doesn't act as a full-fledged replacement for them (unlike TST).
Also, in combination with that, I find it hard to get accustomed to the thought and remind me that I have to look at Tab Stash's tab to see my *other* tabs instead of having them all in one place all the time. (Meaning, it would be nice to have a full-fledged combined display of active and stashed tabs without having to fall back to the native tabs, assuming that separate add-ons like Tab Stash and TST aren't going to be fully compatible.)
Compared to mass operations on actual bookmarks (even hundreds of them), Tab Stash feels kind of "bumpy" handling around 150 (mostly unloaded) tabs.Developer response
posted 9 months agoHi, thank you for the thoughtful review!
You're right that Tab Stash doesn't--and isn't intended to--act as a replacement for the native tab bar. However, I've heard from other folks who are also interested in this, and it's something I'm looking at for future releases. If you have any more specific ideas on what this could look like, I'd love to hear more and discuss further; please feel free to add your thoughts on GitHub: https://github.com/josh-berry/tab-stash/issues
I'd also love to hear more about what feels "bumpy" (again, feel free to open a GitHub issue). One thing I can say is that the bookmark APIs which Firefox provides to extensions like Tab Stash are significantly slower than the native browser UI. But I can't be sure if that's the problem you're hitting without knowing what specifically you're seeing.
But again, thanks for taking the time to write up your experience with Tab Stash, and I'll certainly keep your thoughts in mind for future releases! - by Firefox user 16311482, 9 months agoRated 5 out of 5The best thing since sliced bread.
Really, though: this extension is a breath of fresh air when it comes to organizing your bookmarks. The UI takes a week or so to get the hang of, but after that you have to wonder why this isn't more common to have those game-changer buttons like "open everything and delete this group" in bookmark UIs. The "restore from delete" function means rectifying mistakes are ten second detours. Having your bookmarks in the form of an easy to pull up, easy to hide sidebar is great, and being able to choose a full sized tab when you need it is even better.
I've been using this extension for around a year without issue, and got the rest of my family on it the other month. All smooth sailing, and a big thank you to the dev for continuing to improve this critically useful extension.Developer response
posted 9 months agoHi, thank you so much for your review! I'm glad to hear Tab Stash is working well for you and your family, and really appreciate you taking the time to come back to leave a review after a year of using it. Best wishes! - by jojojo, 10 months agoRated 4 out of 5
- by New Things, 10 months agoRated 5 out of 5Like some others who have rated this add-on, I've been looking for a OneTab replacement. Tab Stash seems very promising in this regard because it offers much greater flexibility. When I first started using Tab Stash, all of the available options seemed confusing, but after using it for a while, I am now impressed.
One suggestion I might have for improvement, however, is to add the ability to select am existing "stash group" when clicking on the toolbar icon or the icon in the address bar, so tabs can be stashed directly instead of moving the tabs into a new group requiring me to move them later. I realize I can accomplish this from the sidebar, but it would be easier to do it my way.
It would also be nice to have an option on the options page to leave a tab alone after stashing it, rather than hiding or closing it.
Third, I'd prefer to have an option to not save deleted stash items at all (i.e., not even for one day).
Finally, being able to rename stashed items (not just groups) directly would be nice too instead of having to do it through bookmarks.
Still ... excellent work!Developer response
posted 10 months agoThank you very much for the kind review!
You've shared a lot of great ideas for improvement here and I want to make sure they don't get lost. Would you be willing to file them on GitHub:
https://github.com/josh-berry/tab-stash/issues/new?template=feature_request.md
Using GitHub also gives more room to discuss and expand on feature ideas, and allows me to track and prioritize all my Tab Stash work.
Thanks again! - by Xiazee, 10 months agoRated 4 out of 5This is a great addon for those times you would be keeping windows open because you want to get back to them later but then end up not remembering which window that was. (Also great for not running out of system memory)
Unfortunately the UI performance is not always too great, lagging when trying to reorder stash groups.
At times it would also be nice to be able to group the groups by topic/task, rather than having one long list of all groups.Developer response
posted 10 months agoHi, thanks for your review!
Sorry to hear you were noticing some lag with stash groups. Drag-and-drop of groups should normally be very fast, so if you'd like me to look into this further, please feel free to open an issue on GitHub. Let me know how many groups/tabs you have, your system specs, and anything else you think might be relevant.
https://github.com/josh-berry/tab-stash/issues/new?template=bug_report.md
Thanks also for your feature request, you can keep an eye out for updates here: https://github.com/josh-berry/tab-stash/issues/14 - by Firefox user 15246577, 10 months agoRated 3 out of 5I can't see how to update the group; if I have several tabs, I save them to a group, then I load tabs from this group and let's say delete a few tabs, the deleted ones are still in this group, creating a new group every time I close the window would be time consuming when I have over a thousand cards process lasted a dozen minutes, I can also manually remove a given tab from the group each time I close it, but that would also be inconvenient, is there any solution?
EDIT: today i lost my session, i tried to restore a saved copy with this addon and it failed, firefox crashes because this addon refreshes every tab it restores and the program can't do it with many tabs, even with 100 tabs its too longDeveloper response
posted 10 months agoHi, thanks for your comments and sorry to hear you're having trouble!
Regarding the deletion behavior: In general, Tab Stash is built with the expectation that any changes made to your groups should be explicitly done by you, not automatically. This helps to keep everything organized--my observation with other browsers and extensions has been that if groups are kept up to date automatically, it's really easy for tabs to get lost or irrelevant things to creep in. For example, if someone interrupts you to ask a question, and you open a new tab or re-purpose an existing tab to handle the interruption, that tab will show up in a group where it doesn't belong. Or worse, you will have lost something in your stash, just because you navigated away from the page you wanted to save.
There are also some technical limitations--Tab Stash stores everything as bookmarks, which are slow to update. If we were to keep your stashes in sync with every single change to your tabs, your browser would slow down considerably to handle all the bookmark updates.
So if what you are looking for is something closer to the "tab groups" features found in other browsers, I'm afraid Tab Stash won't be a good fit for you.
Finally, regarding restoring tabs: In order to re-open a tab which has been closed, Firefox itself must refresh/reload that tab from cache. This is entirely outside Tab Stash's control and is a necessary part of restoring the tab. You can avoid some (but not all) of this by telling Tab Stash never to unload hidden tabs (so the tab is still ready to go), but that comes at the expense of higher memory usage, and Firefox may still decide to unload the tab if memory usage gets too high.
That said, your point is well-taken that restoring a large number of tabs might slow down your browser, and we should probably show a warning to this effect. I'll keep this in mind for a future release! - by Ghost, a year agoRated 5 out of 5
- by Firefox user 13828166, a year agoRated 5 out of 5Perfect for keeping research & projects organized & easily accessible across devices!
- by TigerMan, a year agoRated 5 out of 5Best Tab management tool available. At times when I am researching for an article, I can have 50 plus tabs open which will chew up memory but with Tab Stash, I can stash them into different groups, shift between groups & instantly reduce tabs open thus less memory used. The developer also improves it constantly. Brilliant
- by Firefox user 14159132, a year agoRated 5 out of 5
- by Sans Undertale, a year agoRated 5 out of 5Been looking for a better alternative to OneTab for a while, and I think this might be a winner. Virtually everything I can ask for is here, and the developer is transparent about the extension's numerous permissions. Well done.
Edit: Congratulations on getting into the Recommended Extension Program! - by Firefox user 6509382, a year agoRated 5 out of 5This is a very well-made extension that's definitely a must-have to anyone with the habit of having too many opened tabs at once.
It deserves a lot more attention. - by Spicy Kitten Farts, a year agoRated 5 out of 5
- by Cosmic_Annihilation, a year agoRated 3 out of 5Great idea but as other reviews have mentioned, there are a few annoying UI issues. I'd love to use this addon, the sidebar is way better than using OneTab. But as I was testing the addon, by importing 65 tabs from OneTab export file, it couldn't do it. The UI issues also made me loose a few tabs. I hope development continues and the addon improves. I'll keep it disabled but installed to keep an eye on future releases.
Developer response
posted a year agoHi, thanks for your review, and I'm sorry to hear you had trouble with importing. You can check the support page for the most common problems here: https://josh-berry.github.io/tab-stash/support.html
Note that Tab Stash 2.7 (just released) fixes a conflict between import and Multi-Account Containers, so if you are using that extension, please try again--your problem may already be resolved.
If upgrading to 2.7 and/or the support page steps don't help, I'd love to understand what happened and see if I can resolve the problem. Please feel free to open an issue on GitHub (linked from the support page) so we can discuss further.
Finally, regarding losing tabs, undo delete/remembering deleted items is one of the most-requested features, and has been in the works for quite some time. Fortunately, I'm happy to report that it's now available in Tab Stash 2.7. - by Firefox user 14075751, a year agoRated 3 out of 5Great idea, but UI really should do some rework. I managed to accidentally lose big chunk of tabs in the first minutes of using this extension, and there is no undo. It's so easy to stash/remove from stash - even groups of hundreds of tabs - and as you click, position of buttons change, opening to accidental click to delete whole group.
I would love an extension like this, but which took tabs more seriously, and made it harder to lose data. Also, I really missed option to export and import all stashed tabs.Developer response
posted a year agoHi, thanks for your review. Undo delete/remembering deleted items is one of the most-requested features, and has been in the works for quite some time. Fortunately, I'm happy to report that it's now available in Tab Stash 2.7.
Import and export has been available since Tab Stash 2.6--you can find it in the menu next to the search bar in the Tab Stash UI. A variety of formats are supported, including Markdown and OneTab. - by Firefox user 14017260, a year agoRated 5 out of 5
- by public image ltd., a year agoRated 5 out of 5I discovered this extension by accident, and I am really impressed! It's well thought out, easy to use and nice to look at. I like in particular the possibility to "stash away" tabs which are still running in the background. I use it for listening to music in the background -- that's a tab I don't need and which clutters the tab bar. Now I can stash it aways without needing to worry.
Maybe one related idea: I found out that stashed tabs are unloaded unless this option is explicitly disabled (which I did). Maybe it would be possible to determine loading/unloading in an intelligent way, i.e. via regexp. I would not want to unload the deezer tab, but I don't care about some news web page which I will update anyway when I look at it again.
Or alternatively the memory consumption per stash could be displayed, and a button added to unload the whole group on demand.
Keep up this impressive work!Developer response
posted a year agoHi, thank you very much for the thoughtful review, and I'm glad you're enjoying Tab Stash!
You raise a great point about unloading tabs which might be doing something important (like playing music) in the background. Fortunately, Firefox allows extensions to detect when tabs are playing audio, so in future it should be possible to detect this and keep those tabs loaded—no configuration required. I went ahead and created an enhancement issue for this here: https://github.com/josh-berry/tab-stash/issues/90
Your regexp idea should also be possible though—if that's something you're still interested in, feel free to open another issue on GitHub! - by jose, 2 years agoRated 5 out of 5
- by Firefox user 13535378, 2 years agoRated 5 out of 5
- by nospmisannah, 2 years agoRated 4 out of 5
- by Firefox user 15854259, 2 years agoRated 5 out of 5This extension is fantastic. Very smooth, simple UI; and the sidebar is icing on the cake which I think might even replace Tree Style Tab for me.