TabFern tab manager and backup tool

Save and restore your tabs and windows, and navigate tabs in a vertical view.

About TabFern

TabFern is a powerful Chrome extension designed to organize and manage your browser tabs and windows efficiently. It provides a vertical view of all your open tabs and windows, allowing you to quickly navigate, close, and restore them with just a click. Perfect for researchers, multitaskers, and anyone overwhelmed by numerous tabs, TabFern helps keep your browsing experience streamlined.

Key Features

Save and Restore Tabs: Easily back up your tabs and windows to a text file and restore them anytime without needing to log in.
Vertical Tab Navigation: View all open tabs and windows in a clear vertical layout for better organization.
Session Management: Switch between projects effortlessly by saving different browsing sessions.
Privacy-Focused: Your browsing history is accessed only locally to manage tabs and is never sent anywhere.
Open Source & Actively Developed: TabFern is actively maintained with a welcoming community for bug reports and contributions.

This extension enhances browsing productivity by letting you organize large numbers of tabs efficiently, ensuring you never lose important pages and can switch tasks with ease.

Download

By:: https://cxw42.github.io/TabFern
Users:: 1,000+
Rating:: 4.18
(39)
Version:: 0.4.1 (Last updated: 2025-04-14)
Version code:: 0.4.1.1337
Creation date:: 2020-04-04
Risk:: Moderate risk impact Low risk likelihood
Permissions:: contextMenus
favicon
offscreen
storage
tabs
unlimitedStorage
Size:: 1.49M
Email:: ta*****@zoho.com
URLs:: Website ,Privacy policy
Full description:: See detailed description
Source:: Chrome Web Store
Updated:: a day ago

Ranking

# 23,201 ▲ 98

Other rankings

#4037 in Workflow & Planning ▲ 6 #8 in tabs backup & restore keyword 13 #138 in manager keyword 42 ▼ 5 #154 in tab keyword 80 ▲ 2 #235 in tool keyword 72 ▼ 1

User reviews

TabFern is praised as an effective, open source tab manager and backup tool, ideal for organizing tabs into sessions and saving backups locally. Users appreciate its clean interface and active development, seeing it as a promising alternative to Tabs Outliner. Common issues include lack of tab group restoration, memory overload when restoring large backups, no keyboard shortcuts, and limited hierarchical tab management. Despite these, it is valued for stability, speed, and its role in managing tab sessions efficiently across devices.

Pros

Open source and actively developed as a solid alternative to Tabs Outliner, without licensing issues.
Provides convenient backup and restoration of tabs and windows, including saving to local disk in JSON format.
User-friendly interface that is clean, simple, and functional with features like resizable tab list window.
Helps organize tabs and windows efficiently, especially useful for managing projects or research sessions.
Faster and more stable than older tab managers like Tabs Outliner, with no annoying ads or payment nags.

Cons

Lacks support for Chrome Tab Groups restoration, causing disorganized tabs after session restore.
Restoring large backups can load all tabs into memory at once, causing crashes instead of suspending them.
No keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys to quickly open the tab list or manage windows.
Limited tab hierarchy support; currently only one-level grouping and no tree structure like Tabs Outliner.
Some users experience the extension's popup initially opening very large or taking time to load, impacting usability.

Recent reviews

Пока все заявленные и необходимые функции работают превосходно. Само дополнение красиво, удобно в работе- даже окно со списком вкладок можно растягивать и сжимать. Автор молодец!

Alessandro Cheguevara, 2024-05-04

Minhas guias e janelas, simplesmente, desapareceram. Perdi todas, com esta extensão.

Lúcia Maria de Souza, 2023-09-21

非常好用要是能出个类似edge新出的垂直标签那种侧边栏模式就好了因为想全屏浏览时直接可以点击不得不配一个窗口置顶的外置插件

Ladia Zhang, 2023-03-12

View all user reviews

Extension safety

Risk impact

TabFern tab manager and backup tool requires a few sensitive permissions. Exercise caution before installing.

Risk impact analysis details

Critical Grants access to browser tabs, which can be used to track user browsing habits and history, presenting a privacy concern.
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Risk likelihood

TabFern tab manager and backup tool has earned a fairly good reputation and likely can be trusted.

Risk likelihood analysis details

High This extension was recently updated in the past month. New updates may not be stable or safe.
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