Reviews for Tab Stash
Tab Stash by Josh Berry
Review by Thomas Leon Highbaugh
Rated 5 out of 5
by Thomas Leon Highbaugh, 4 years agoI have used this extensions in the past, it was the same then as now, but have tried two different options as alternatives as I wanted to see if something better existed, taking 3 months to come back to this extension.
My issue prompting the 3 month sabbatical was that the stashed tabs, which I want to manage and keep more groomed and under control, quickly grow way out of my capacity to manage. Yet neither alternative I tried was able to reliably save tabs (which in code is easy enough to implement storage as plain text list of tabs I would think) and Tab Stash not only can reliably keep the list of tabs between reboots, but it even can restore lists between installs or on different machines reliably.
So yes, the tab list is harder to manage than I would prefer, click the tab and its gonna reopen and the buttons are fickle to get to press (dev could increase there size and create a transparent outline in the css that is 3px or greater to alleviate this). My other minor gripes is I hate when the sidebar opens itself for any reason, I use a modified firefox which I have bolted userChrome.js loaders into the system-wide application directory that load custom toolbars on all four sides of my screen and don't use the native sidebar for any purpose ever, preferring extensions placed on the vertical toolbar opposite of my custom rolled vertical tab solution, which is all pushed to the side by the native sidebar, which amounts to 2 seconds of additional work until I determine how to disable the native sidebar with either CSS or JS and is hardly an actual issue for me just annoying. The other minor gripe is am a fan of monochromatic (mostly) window styling and am unaware of the class/id names to modify the color of the fickle little buttons, which are not the most horrid colors, but still if the sidebar must be out sometimes, I would prefer the buttons be just the icon or gray. But that's me, not everyone cares and most probably like the colors so I don't fault anyone for any of that and will not remove any stars over any of it.
This extension only seems to save tabs to a list and then backups it up with the sync service provided by firefox, so reviews talking about it eating RAM make little sense and even a crude tab suspender will effectively provide a mitigation against such (at least on Linux which does not itself have much hardware overhead wasted on telemetry like a certain popular OS does, which I can't speak for as I haven't used anything but linux in 6 years). Additionally CPU usage makes no sense considering the extension only does anything at all at the point the user stashes their tabs, which itself should not cause any issue on modern hardware on any platform, but maybe there is some specific issue that the Redmond special causes there I would be happily unaware of on my customized distro where the system does nothing I do not tell it to do.
If the popup menu or sidebar doesn't appear as someone has seemed to indicate, then the issue is probably with the about:config setting or some other unrelated configuration that is easily restored to default in about:config and definitely not a problem with this configuration which seems to do a relatively simple task well and its up to me to stay on top of it but its the only reliable tab manager I have used on modern firefox, works even with my specific setup and stays out of my way, aka does require messing with container naming while handling multiple windows beautifully and has no performance impact (on Linux at least) that I have ever noticed making it a default I will keep coming back to.
Great work developer!
My issue prompting the 3 month sabbatical was that the stashed tabs, which I want to manage and keep more groomed and under control, quickly grow way out of my capacity to manage. Yet neither alternative I tried was able to reliably save tabs (which in code is easy enough to implement storage as plain text list of tabs I would think) and Tab Stash not only can reliably keep the list of tabs between reboots, but it even can restore lists between installs or on different machines reliably.
So yes, the tab list is harder to manage than I would prefer, click the tab and its gonna reopen and the buttons are fickle to get to press (dev could increase there size and create a transparent outline in the css that is 3px or greater to alleviate this). My other minor gripes is I hate when the sidebar opens itself for any reason, I use a modified firefox which I have bolted userChrome.js loaders into the system-wide application directory that load custom toolbars on all four sides of my screen and don't use the native sidebar for any purpose ever, preferring extensions placed on the vertical toolbar opposite of my custom rolled vertical tab solution, which is all pushed to the side by the native sidebar, which amounts to 2 seconds of additional work until I determine how to disable the native sidebar with either CSS or JS and is hardly an actual issue for me just annoying. The other minor gripe is am a fan of monochromatic (mostly) window styling and am unaware of the class/id names to modify the color of the fickle little buttons, which are not the most horrid colors, but still if the sidebar must be out sometimes, I would prefer the buttons be just the icon or gray. But that's me, not everyone cares and most probably like the colors so I don't fault anyone for any of that and will not remove any stars over any of it.
This extension only seems to save tabs to a list and then backups it up with the sync service provided by firefox, so reviews talking about it eating RAM make little sense and even a crude tab suspender will effectively provide a mitigation against such (at least on Linux which does not itself have much hardware overhead wasted on telemetry like a certain popular OS does, which I can't speak for as I haven't used anything but linux in 6 years). Additionally CPU usage makes no sense considering the extension only does anything at all at the point the user stashes their tabs, which itself should not cause any issue on modern hardware on any platform, but maybe there is some specific issue that the Redmond special causes there I would be happily unaware of on my customized distro where the system does nothing I do not tell it to do.
If the popup menu or sidebar doesn't appear as someone has seemed to indicate, then the issue is probably with the about:config setting or some other unrelated configuration that is easily restored to default in about:config and definitely not a problem with this configuration which seems to do a relatively simple task well and its up to me to stay on top of it but its the only reliable tab manager I have used on modern firefox, works even with my specific setup and stays out of my way, aka does require messing with container naming while handling multiple windows beautifully and has no performance impact (on Linux at least) that I have ever noticed making it a default I will keep coming back to.
Great work developer!
Developer response
posted 4 years agoThanks for the review and the feedback! I will keep in mind your point about the buttons being too small and the preference for less color.
The sidebar can be controlled (to a certain extent) in Tab Stash's preferences. However there are some situations (e.g. on an extension update) where Firefox will just decide to open the sidebar and the add-on has no control over this.
Hope this helps, and I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it!
The sidebar can be controlled (to a certain extent) in Tab Stash's preferences. However there are some situations (e.g. on an extension update) where Firefox will just decide to open the sidebar and the add-on has no control over this.
Hope this helps, and I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it!
593 reviews
- Rated 4 out of 5by greenpersonal, 3 days agoNice extension, one issue, in the url bar the icon always stays dark, so it becomes invisible in dark theme. The color of icon changes in sidebar and in extension icon as well.
Developer response
posted 3 days agoHi, thanks for the review! Yes, this is a known issue that started happening with the most recent version of Firefox. I already have a fix in that will go out with the next release. - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17091457, 9 days ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by aljustiet, 11 days agoI think it would be great to have duplicates in the tab stash.
Developer response
posted 3 days agoI'm not sure exactly what you mean—Tab Stash will allow you to stash duplicates if you explicitly select the tabs you want to stash. However, feel free to open an issue on GitHub if you'd like to discuss further! - Rated 5 out of 5by Carbon, 12 days agoBeen using this add-on for years and it's truly great. Please kindly fix the 'stash this tab' icon on dark mode since it remains black after some firefox update.
Developer response
posted 12 days agoThanks for letting me know, I've made a note to look into it. It seems Firefox may have broken the workaround I was using to switch the icon's theme for dark mode. And thank you for the review! - Rated 5 out of 5by Raygen, 22 days agoBest alternative I've found so far for having workspaces in Firefox. It can sync between devices too since it uses bookmarks!
- Rated 5 out of 5by Nikitamce, 24 days agoРасширение крутое и имеет куча возможностой взаимодействия с вкладками и их экспортом и сохранением. Получше tabs outliner из гугл хром. Добавьте пожалуйста русский язык и расширение будет на 6 звёзд))
Developer response
posted 23 days agoThank you for the kind review, I'm glad you're enjoying it! I do want to add support for more languages, but I haven't yet found the time. Others have already started to help out with translations, so I will try to get to it soon! - Rated 5 out of 5by Dax the Duck, sorta, a month agoProbably the best extension of its kind. I really like this thing so I don't need to keep important tabs open forever.
- Rated 5 out of 5by SEBAS204, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by signora's ashes, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 14213314, 2 months ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by Aksarnerk, 2 months agoIt's a wonderful add-on. It has a very powerful interface that offers great flexibility.
Implementing the data store in the form of bookmarks is a great idea. It’s a major help in a world where no browser yet understands the concept of ubiquity, the importance of having a robust implementation of workspaces that allow us to maintain consistency across the many computers we might use.
I would just appreciate if it were able to save and restore the pinned status of the tabs. The data layer allows for this; Firefox bookmarks let you assign a tag like “*Pinned”, which in my opinion would be the ideal and most simple way to store this attribute.
It would also be great if we could open a Tab Stash group as a Firefox tab group, or even open a TS group in FF along with its sub-groups (at least the top-level ones; in this regard, TS far surpasses the capabilities of FF tab grouping), accurately reflecting this “tree” structure.
If these features exist, I haven't been able to find them.
In any case, it's fantastic; the kind of add-on you'll find hard to do without once you start using it. Thanks so much, Josh.Developer response
posted 2 months agoThank you for the thoughtful and kind words! I really appreciate you taking the time to write this up.
Regarding the pinned status, unfortunately Firefox does not expose any APIs for extensions to use to edit tags and keywords—there's no way for me to store metadata along with a bookmark outside its URL and title. I wish there were because there is a lot more that could be done, but this is unfortunately not an option.
Regarding tab groups, I agree with you—it's a feature I'm actively working on but isn't ready yet. Unfortunately, it's taking me quite a long time due to life getting in the way, and due to the fact that it is a major change to how Tab Stash works internally and how it communicates with Firefox. I also want to make sure I get the feature right and that it doesn't feel bolted-on to how the extension works. So it may take a while longer yet, but it'll happen eventually!
And again, thanks for the kind words, they mean a lot! I'm happy to hear Tab Stash is working well for you. And of course, feel free to reach out on GitHub if anything ever comes up. - Rated 5 out of 5by Dvij D.C., 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19965010, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Oleg, 2 months ago
Developer response
posted 2 months agoI myself use Tab Stash with vertical tabs on a daily basis, so I'm not really sure what you mean. If you have any more specific feedback about what's not working well for you, I'd love to hear it—please feel free to reach out on GitHub!- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18803533, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Joe Bloggs, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by jg40320z, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by 4jpchza8, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by 5deabsvr, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by RedCreator37, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Guy Schwartz, 4 months agoThis the add-on you didn't know you needed.
Well thought out and effective.
Very useful for grouping daily tabs and working tab sets. - Rated 4 out of 5by Doug, 4 months agoOverall, I liked it very much, was easy to use. HOWEVER, I just went through an upgrade fo Fedora, and related apps, and TAB STASH was removed as an extention in FireFox. As a result, I've lost all the TABS I specifically stashed to protect through the upgrade!
Developer response
posted 4 months agoNo idea why it would be removed in Firefox, unless the upgrade somehow completely wiped out your Firefox profile. But, assuming your profile (with all your other Firefox settings etc.) is still intact, your stashed tabs should still be there in your bookmarks! And you should still be able to reinstall Tab Stash from here and everything should continue to work. - Rated 4 out of 5by FireFox-User-1, 5 months agoNearly a perfect extension with really BAD DESIGN DECISIONS FOR RESEARCH!
Why there is no easy naming like "into stash" and "out of stash" ?
Why stashing in disappears the NEEDED stashes?
Why Stashing out ADDS to the open ones when you only want to change a group and access that group?
Really the option to go in the bookmarks makes it the only acceptable Tabber but the work-flow-design are absolutely illogical and exactly what you want a Tabber not to do.
Tabbers are for instant access and not also chitchat with the tool!
So yes absolutely use it, but be aware of the 100%+ workload add-on for working with the tool.
As the tools most useful option is to save the work not making it easier in the flow.
So if the Dev can would address that, you really need no other tab-add-ons or even session manangers as all goes into the bookmark!!!
This is an impressive option!!!
Great work on that Dev!!!Developer response
posted 5 months agoI'm afraid I'm not really following what your concerns are, but you may want to have a look through GitHub to see if some of the things you're asking for are already covered as feature requests. And/or, feel free to open a new issue / new issues on GitHub for the things you think are missing or unintuitive, and I'd be happy to discuss further. Thanks for the comments! - Rated 1 out of 5by Ash, 5 months agoI was hoping this would be a little more intuitive to use. Unfortunately the UX is hampered by poor UI choices
Developer response
posted 5 months agoSorry to hear you ran into trouble; unfortunately I have nothing to go on in your review to improve things. Please feel free to open an issue on GitHub if you have any more specific feedback.