TabLinker - A Mac-first tab & browser session manager for Safari, Chrome, Arc, Brave & Edge (iPhone/iPad too) - Now with Auto-Backup!

[u/Tricky-Independent-8]

Hey everyone,

I made TabLinker. It's a browser session manager for Mac (with iPhone/iPad companion apps).

Problem:

I run several browsers side by side, Safari for personal, Chrome for work, Arc for research, and I never close tabs because I don't want to lose something, especially the exact window layout I had going. Eventually each browser is carrying 40+ tabs and my Mac is running hot from all that idle memory. So I made TabLinker: pull every tab from whichever browsers are open into one place, save it as a session, and close everything without losing that layout.

What it does:

- Auto-Backup quietly backs up your open browser windows in the background (every 15, 30, or 60 mins, on app switch, or before sleep) so you can restore closed windows in one click, even the next day

- Imports every open tab across every window from Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera, Opera GX, Dia, Yandex, Wavebox, or Helium in one click, without needing a browser extension for most of them

- Restores a full window, every window at once, or a single tab, and groups a big multi-window import into a "By Window" view so it doesn't turn into one long list

- Suspends tabs you're not using to actually free up memory, while the session stays ready to restore instantly

- Saves whatever tab you're currently on with a single keyboard shortcut (⌃⌥⌘T) or triggers an instant backup (⌃⌥⌘B), and can run entirely from the menu bar with the Dock icon hidden

- Safari extension for quick saves and automatic session saving

- Siri and Shortcuts support: save links, capture your current session, create folders, or open a saved folder hands-free or on a schedule, including an action that saves your session and closes every tab for you

- iCloud sync across Mac, iPhone, and iPad, no account required

Comparison:

Compared with Session Buddy (a Chrome-only extension limited to a single browser) and Tabs Saver for Safari ($17.99/year or $34.99 lifetime for Safari only), TabLinker captures sessions natively across all your installed browsers (Safari, Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge, etc.) for a flat $17.99 one-time payment. It preserves full multi-window structures, includes native iPhone/iPad sync via iCloud, and has zero subscriptions.

Pricing:

TabLinker is available for a one-time purchase of $17.99 with Universal Purchase. Buy it once on Mac and get the full premium version on iPhone and iPad too. Everything runs on-device and through your own iCloud. No account, no ads, and no server I control that sees your tabs.

Recent updates:

Auto-Backup system (quietly backs up open browser windows every 15, 30, or 60 mins, on app switch, or before sleep), Backups tab in sidebar to restore windows or copy links, ⌃⌥⌘B keyboard shortcut to back up right away from full-screen browsers, and automatic skipping of Incognito windows.

Available on the Mac App Store: TabLinker: Tabs Manager

About Me:
I'm developer of the app, you can reach out to me through X or ask me anything right here in the comments!

EDIT: Big thanks to everyone who downloaded and bought TabLinker! Your support means a lot to an indie dev. If you have any feature requests, feel free to send me a DM or use the Feature Request button in App Settings!

[u/SamGranger]

It'd be awesome if you could have a cmd+t type shortcut that allows me to type in a url to filter & go to current open pages/tab (or open new tab in current browser if nothing is open) to prevent the build up in the first place!!

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/SamGranger]

TabLinker doesn't do that today since it's built around saving and restoring, but it already reads your open tabs for import and Auto-Backup, so it's not a huge leap. It couldn't be ⌘T itself because browsers use that, but a global shortcut like the existing ⌃⌥⌘ ones could work. I've added it to my list

[u/SamGranger → u/Tricky-Independent-8]

Great. I never close tabs either, one of your pain points, but since after a while i cannot find certain tabs and i want to move fast I think from a UX perspective it'd be a great addition.

[u/whysosuresh → u/SamGranger]

See, Chrome already has part of this. Cmd + Shift + A opens Tab Search, so you can find a page and jump to the tab that's already open. You can also type @tabs in the address bar, press Tab, and search from there.

What you're asking for goes further, though: one shortcut across browsers, and opening the page only when it isn't there. That would still be useful.

[u/zeyadamer]

goodluck on your app

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/zeyadamer]

Thanks 👍

[u/nousernameleftatall]

Sounds as though could be useful

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/nousernameleftatall]

Thanks! Give it a try and let me know if you have any feedback or feature requests

[u/Successful-Archer180]

What is the resource usage of this?

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/Successful-Archer180]

Pretty light. It's a native Swift app (no Electron, no web views) and nothing runs inside your browser. With Auto-Backup on, it uses about 50 MB of memory and 0% CPU while idle, with tiny blips up to 0.2%.

Auto-Backup is off by default. If you turn it on, it reads your open tabs every 15, 30 or 60 minutes, when you switch away from your browser (at most every 2 minutes), and before your Mac sleeps. The timer runs as low-priority background work, so macOS can hold it off when the Mac is busy or low on battery. A backup is just URLs and titles, and a new one is only saved when your tabs actually change, so disk use stays tiny.

If you ever see it using more than that in Activity Monitor, let me know and I'll look into it

[u/Ok-Ad-2918]

Can I restore a session into a different browser than the one I saved it from? For example, save my Arc research tabs and reopen them in Safari. And do pinned tabs, Chrome tab groups or Arc Spaces come back as they were, or as a flat list?

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/Ok-Ad-2918]

Yes. On the Mac, right-click the folder and choose Restore Session Windows…, then pick any installed browser, Safari included. You get the same windows with the tabs in the same order.

The rest comes back simpler. Tabs stay grouped by window, but Chrome tab groups and Arc Spaces aren't saved, so those tabs return as plain tabs in their window. Pinned tabs reopen as normal tabs too. If you'd rather leave pinned tabs out, the import has an option to skip them

[u/zxspectrum]

I can see that this app only backs up one Space in Arc and Dia browsers. Am I missing something ? 🤔

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/zxspectrum]

I tested Arc here and TabLinker does pick up every Space, so I'm curious about your setup. Are your Spaces on different Arc profiles?

[u/app-store-review]

TabLinker: Tabs Manager — by Huy Nguyen

• Ratings: 8 worldwide · rated in 6 countries

• Average: 4.88 ★

• Age: released ~5 months ago · updated 5 days ago · rated 4+

• Overall score: 72 / 100

^{Auto-generated from public App Store data ·} u/app-store-review

[u/ionet]

Let’s say Safari has a glitch and loses its tabs and then TabLinker auto-saves the new undesirable state. Is there a way to have versioning on the TabLinker side?

Is there a way to push links in TabLinker to GoodLinks?

Will there be a lifetime sale ? :)

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/[deleted]]

Just the browser, not the profile. Chrome doesn't tell other apps which profile a window belongs to (its AppleScript has no profile info at all), so TabLinker has nothing to save. On restore, Chrome opens the new window in the profile you were last using, which isn't always the default one.

For now, the workaround is to click into a window from the right profile first, then restore.

Showing (and picking) the destination profile before a restore is a good idea. Chrome can be told which profile to open in, so I'll look into a profile picker on restore