Tab Shelf - Side panel vertical tabs icon

Tab Shelf - Side panel vertical tabs

by Clarence Siew

v2026.1.2 Updated Feb 23, 2026 1.94MiB
CWS
8K
Users
β˜… 4.38
64 reviews
#2483
of 68.3K
functionality
#59 of 2.1K
βœ…Recently updated

Description

Tab Shelf is a feature-packed, versatile, vertical tab manager for Chrome. πŸ€” WHY VERTICAL TABS? Whether you're frantically doing research for a paper, queuing up articles to read, or you just love hoarding tabs, tab management can be a pain. Having all your tabs squeezed at the top of your window makes it hard to remember what tabs you have and to quickly navigate between them. Being able to persistently view all your tabs in a convenient, colorful, and customizable vertical view takes that headache away! ⭐️ FEATURES - View and manage your tabs conveniently from the side panel. - Use rules to automatically group tabs from specific websites (or right-click on a tab and choose to group all tabs from the same site). - Save and restore tab groups, windows, and browser sessions. - Quickly search or filter your tabs by group, window, or whether they've got audio playing. - Duplicate tab detection and deletion (optional). - Sleep your tabs to save memory and energy. You can also set tabs opened in the background to sleep after a specified period of time. - Sync your settings and grouping rules via your Google account across your other computers. - Light and dark themes to match your browser, plus 20 accent colors to give your Tab Shelf some flair. Also includes Roomy, Comfortable, and Compact display density options. - Choose from amongst 20 colors to differentiate your tab groups and windows. 🌏 TRANSLATIONS Tab Shelf is available in 17 languages. πŸ” PRIVACY POLICY Please read Tab Shelf's privacy policy (which can be found at: https://www.tabshelf.com/privacy-policy) to understand how Tab Shelf prioritizes responsible permissions usage and user privacy. Tab Shelf does not and will never collect your data. πŸ› οΈ USAGE You can launch Tab Shelf in a number of ways: 1. Opening the Chrome side panel via the toolbar button (on the right-hand side, next to your profile button) and selecting Tab Shelf. 2. Pinning the Tab Shelf extension button to the toolbar. This allows you to open Tab Shelf in a single click. You can also use the default keyboard shortcut to quickly open Tab Shelf: * On Windows/Linux: Ctrl + Shift + O * On macOS: Command + Shift + O For a more detailed user guide, please visit: https://tabshelf.com/user-guide Disclaimer: This extension requires at least Chrome 114 in order for side panel integration to work. Other Chromium-based browsers are not officially supported. ======================= CHANGELOG - v2026.1.2 ======================= IMPROVEMENTS - Improved auto-scroll behavior so Tab Shelf more reliably jumps to your active tab when the side panel opens. - Improved scrolling to active tabs in long tab lists and collapsed groups. BUG FIXES - Fixed an issue where the tab group does not appear when a tab is added to it via grouping rules. - Fixed an issue where Tab Shelf could sometimes fail to scroll to the active tab after launch or updates. - Fixed layout overlap issues while using selection mode where the tab mute/unmute button appears over the tab selection checkbox. ======================= CHANGELOG - v2026.1.1 ======================= NEW FEATURES - Collapse or expand all tab groups at once from the Action Bar. - New search settings to control whether matching tab groups and windows auto-expand while searching (Never / Auto-expand / Temporarily auto-expand). IMPROVEMENTS - Re-implemented tab list virtualization for better performance across density modes. - Performance optimizations including favicon caching and reduced re-renders in the tab list. - Persist tab list sorting order per window and prevent sort order resets during session updates. - Moved Duplicate and Audible tab filter buttons back to the top bar (next to the search button). - Duplicate tab indication now uses a favicon badge instead of changing the tab background. - Optimistically refresh tab group collapse/expand state to avoid stale UI on some Chromium forks (e.g. Brave). - Selection mode checkboxes for window and tab group headers now keep a consistent position. BUG FIXES - Fixed tab group colors not updating correctly (including color picker state). - Fixed an issue where double-clicking a tab item could create a phantom new tab. - Fixed "Add to Tab Tray" actions showing when Tab Tray is disabled. - Fixed duplicate tab detection in incognito windows caused by internal URLs (e.g. `about:blank`). ======================= CHANGELOG - v2026.1.0 ======================= NEW FEATURES - Tab Tray - temporarily pin tabs to a dedicated tray for quick access across your session. Tray tabs persist until you close the tab or close the session, where the tray tabs will be moved to an archive section. - Drag-and-drop tabs from the tab list into the Tab Tray. - Search within the Tab Tray to quickly find tray tabs. - Right-click context menus on Tab Tray items for quick actions. - Support for Chrome's new split view mode. Use controls between two paired tabs to swap, separate, reload, sleep, or close paired tabs. - Pop-up mode - open Tab Shelf in a pop-up window in the browser toolbar instead of the side panel. - Auto-scroll to active tab - automatically scroll the tab list to the current active tab when switching tabs via the tab strip or keyboard shortcuts. - User Guide - access a built-in guide to learn about features and how to use Tab Shelf. - New tab reposition options in tab context menus: - Move tab(s) to another window; quickly move selected tabs to any other open window from the context menu. - Reposition ungrouped tabs; move ungrouped tabs to the start or end of the tab list. - Sleep/Close tabs in group; sleep or close all tabs within the same group, tabs to the left/right within the group, or other tabs in the group. - Search in grouping rules modal - quickly find and filter rules in large rule sets. IMPROVEMENTS - Redesigned the Saves modal navigation with a dropdown filter menu for easier navigation between saved sessions, windows, and tab groups. - Consolidated filter and sort controls into the search bar for a cleaner interface. - Unified tooltip behavior across the entire extension for a more consistent experience. - Centralized grouping rule execution via service workers for improved performance and to allow rules to run when Tab Shelf is not open. - Improved rendering performance for tab lists and context menus. BUG FIXES - Fixed styling and drag-and-drop issues when dragging tabs over the window filter. - Fixed an issue where moving tabs to a window without grouping would incorrectly group already-grouped tabs. - Fixed a regression where exiting the duplicate tab filter would cause the user to be trapped in filtering mode. - Fixed an issue where restoring pinned tabs to a configured URL without a protocol (e.g. `www.google.com`) would fail to navigate. - Fixed an issue where accent color mappings would not initialize correctly on new installs or with empty storage. DEPRECATED - Removed the "Reduce spacing in pinned tabs compact view" setting - the compact view now uses a consistent, optimized layout. - Removed the "Number of tabs per row in compact view" setting - the compact view now automatically adjusts based on available space.
Tab Shelf - Side panel vertical tabs screenshot 1Tab Shelf - Side panel vertical tabs screenshot 2Tab Shelf - Side panel vertical tabs screenshot 3Tab Shelf - Side panel vertical tabs screenshot 4Tab Shelf - Side panel vertical tabs screenshot 5

Reviews (9 cached)

β˜…β˜†β˜†β˜†β˜†2025-03-06
bloodys spammers

πŸ™…πŸ‘ŽπŸ™…β€β™€οΈπŸ‘ŽπŸ™…β€β™‚οΈ DOES NOT WORK IN YANDEX BROWSER! CLICKING EXTENSION ICON DOES NOTHING! PLEASE FIX! THANK YOU! 😊🌟😊🌟😊🌟😊🌟

β˜…β˜†β˜†β˜†β˜†2024-07-01
M9VK

Latest update required too many dangerous permissions. This is unacceptable without open source

β˜…β˜†β˜†β˜†β˜†2024-03-08
ΠœΠ°Ρ€Π°Ρ‚ Калимов

Dont work -_-

β˜…β˜…β˜†β˜†β˜†2025-07-08
K D

It started crashing now everytime I try to use. Note I have >100 tabs per window and about 10 windows (not open at the same time). Whatever new features you have added is causing memory leak and instability.

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†β˜†2025-10-05
Ashish Alexander

Bad: - cannot name the Saves - or export / import

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†β˜†2024-10-19
Serge

It would be great if it were possible to detach this manager into a separate windowβ€”for example, with the ability to move it to another area of the screen or even place it on a different monitor. As it stands, it takes up too much valuable screen space.

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†β˜†2024-03-08
Adeel Elahi

please someone help me i've added the extension and enabled it but when i click on tab shelf icon nothing happens otherwise i like the concept of vertical tabs

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†β˜†2023-12-23
Ali Reza

chrome grouping is stupid and unpractical. can you make chrome groups in separate pans? something like Firefox Sidebery.

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†β˜†2023-10-26
Jondeir Junior

Great extension! Please make it compatible with the new tab group save and sync feature in chrome, so that we can close tab groups but they remain saved for later usage

Permissions (7)

Permissions

bookmarksβ„Ή Can read and modify your bookmarks commandsfaviconsidePanel storageβ„Ή Can store data locally in your browser tabGroupsβ„Ή Can organize tabs into groups tabsβ„Ή Can see your open tabs and their URLs

Details

Version 2026.1.2
Updated Feb 23, 2026
Size 1.94MiB
First Seen Mar 24, 2026