Hey HN,
A couple months ago, I got fed up with my tabs and how my workflow with my browser was consistently getting out of hand. I looked at the wide array of tab manager extensions and found that just about all of them have what I considered to be deal-breakers, such as:
1. Taking over my New Tab page --
I actually like a quieter, subtle image or news feed for my New Tab page.
2. Requires a dedicated tab itself --
This means in order to manage my tabs, I have to go back to this dedicated tab on that dedicated window, and begin whatever I was going to do once I'm there.
3. User experience --
It almost seemed like they want you to spend tons of time just organizing everything and learning every little feature. I prefer to get started and learn more as I use it more.
4. Pricing & onboarding --
A lot of the paid ones have what I consider to be steep pricing for something I wasn't sure I would commit to, or the signup involved me telling them where I work, my birthday or other irrelevant info.
5. Browser history access --
I get why other tab managers do it, but I personally just don't like the idea and I believe that a great tab manager tool can be created without this.
All in all, I was looking to just 1) install the extension and 2) see from there. So I created TabMagic. TabMagic is instantly available on any website via what I've dubbed the "Magic Panel"! Press CMD+Shift+Space (CTRL+Shift+Space on PC) to begin managing tabs.
I left the New Tab page alone, so that anyone can use whatever else they have (or nothing at all), but this doesn't come at the cost of ease-of-use/access!
It's inspired by Vim, so I'm trying to incorporate keyboard shortcuts everywhere to make working with the Magic Panel as fast as possible. The shortcuts are listed on the homepage, but will be viewable directly within the Magic Panel in the very next update.
You can organize your tabs into different workspaces (which you can quickly share with others) and the paid version allows the creation of private workspaces that only you can see + the ability to annotate any of the tabs you share to save pertinent info about them. One of the features I'm enjoying more than I thought I would is the ease of accessing my bookmarks across multiple browsers and devices -- simply install the TabMagic extension on another browser, log in, and you're done!
Last tidbit: It comes with a built-in tab suspender, which you can toggle by pressing "X" when the Magic Panel appears and selecting all the tabs you wish to suspend.
I've only been working on it a little over a month, but I've been enjoying using it even as I was creating it, and I look forward to receiving feature requests from anyone who wants to try it! It's available on both Chrome and Firefox!
Let me know if you have any feedback or questions!
* tagging?
* a free tier?
* sync between desktop Chrome, desktop Firefox, and a mobile app?
I also wish I could organize bookmarks by date created / modified. No browser I've encountered supports this function out of the box.