The cool thing about browser tabs is that we can open as many of them as we want to but the trouble thereafter is managing them. Chrome is no exception but thankfully a smart extension called Spaces now makes it a breeze to manage Chrome tabs effortlessly. Spaces is a workspace manager that turns each Chrome window into a workspace that you can name, save, close and reopen later with all tabs intact.
How to Manage Chrome Tabs with Spaces Chrome Extension
After you download and install Spaces on your Chrome browser, a new Spaces window is opened. A window icon is also added to the right of the Address bar from where you can manage all your workspaces and switch between them.
Spaces keeps track of all tabs that you open and close and displays them on the workspace pages you save them on. To create a workspace, you simply need to open a new window. You can open as many tabs as you want on the window and save them in one workspace.
You can also move tabs from one workspace to another one (whether opened or closed) if you find that they are irrelevant for the current browsing task. You could say that Spaces is a lot like bookmarks in folders, but this extension lets you also view recently closed pages in a workspace. Plus, the fact that you can move the tabs quickly into different workspaces makes it a more attractive proposition to use.
Spaces also lets you use the Ctrl+Shift+S keyboard shortcut to search the workspaces you saved. The Manage menu lets you view the list of all open workspaces you created. You can move individual tabs to new workspaces by hitting the Spaces icon and selecting Move active tab. In the Active Space panel that pops up, you can select a workspace and click Move. (You can also assign a hotkey for this purpose.)
To open all the tabs in a workspace, you need to hit the Spaces icon and select Manage Spaces. Then, click the name of the space on the left pane and once the details of the tabs are displayed, you need to click the square icon with the upward pointing arrow (next to the Workspace name) to open all tabs in a new window.
Spaces also lets you export a workspace to a text file, which you can import later on another machine running the Spaces Chrome Extension. If you have no use for a workspace anymore you can delete it by clicking the Trash icon at the top right of the workspace window. However, I did not find an intuitive method to delete a tab inside a workspace.
Spaces is a really cool concept that makes it easy for you to manage multiple tabs for you to view later on. The best part about if of course, is that any window that you last had open is also available for viewing later on, in case you need to get back to it. Plus, your Chrome browser will no longer hog all of your RAM.
On the downside, it would be more intuitive to have an option to open different workspaces without having to click multiple times. The extension still has some way to go as I still don’t see drag and drop functionality, ability to delete individual tabs, add notes to workspaces, sort them and so on.
That said, Spaces Chrome extension does a fairly good job for one that is relatively new to the Store. If you have multiple tabs open, but only use a few of them for your present task, you can save the rest in workspaces and close them to use only when needed.
Do check out this cool extension to manage Chrome tabs and tell us what you think.
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