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!
577 reviews
- Rated 5 out of 5by Guy Schwartz, 6 days 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, 11 days 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 11 days 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 3 out of 5by FireFox-User-1, 25 days 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 24 days 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, a month agoI was hoping this would be a little more intuitive to use. Unfortunately the UX is hampered by poor UI choices
Developer response
posted a month 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. - Rated 5 out of 5by René, a month agoExcellent! A bit confusing at first, but after a while I got the grip.
What I like a lot is:
1 - that you can rename stashed tabs and
2 - that stashed tabs stay unchanged since the extension copies an opened tab to the 'Open tabs' group. So: the stashed url does not change while navigating. This is a huge advantage over tabs in tabgroup: they change while clicking on links. - Rated 5 out of 5by Instagram Downloader, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by elsenfox, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Aguilucho, 2 months agoExcellent extension!
It enhances the Firefox Bookmark feature.
It turns it into a flexible tool with many possibilities, of which my favorite is that it allows you to suspend a work session and resume it the next day or even days later without losing anything.
You can also resume by topic of interest, for example, Sundays, friends, etc., without losing the sequence of activity. It's like a bookmark but dynamic, because it follows you like a dog on a walk.
I wanted to make subfolders like stash2025, stash2024, etc.
How could I manage subfolders to make stash perfect?Developer response
posted 2 months agoThanks, I'm really happy to hear you like it! You can create subfolders with drag and drop (just drag one folder inside another), or by opening the "..." menu to the right of the folder name and choosing "New Child Group". Hope this helps! - Rated 5 out of 5by Rafael , 2 months agoTabStash is one of those Extensions that should be included in the default browser. Right now my workflow is: current things are on TabStash, long term things are "normal" bookmarks. But that will change soon. This extension has been a life saver and after you try it you won't engage with your browser as before ever again.
Developer response
posted 2 months agoVery kind words, thank you so much! I'm really glad to hear you've found it useful! - Rated 5 out of 5by Abrikosas, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Kojima020, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18022924, 3 months agoGreat extension! Thanks!
Is there any chance of making this available to Firefox mobile? Especially Android edition. That would be killer especially if it used sync like the desktop version.Developer response
posted 2 months agoThanks for the kind words! Unfortunately, I'm not an Android user, so I have no way to develop and test it on Android. However, all your saved tabs are still accessible in your bookmarks on Android. You can feel free to edit the bookmarks on your phone, and Tab Stash on your desktop will pick up the changes when they sync. I know it's not ideal, but unless someone who uses Android steps up to help, I'm afraid that's the best I can offer right now. - Rated 5 out of 5by Phllip, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19487299, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Aeredy, 4 months agoBest extension hands down. Dev also a goat in terms of support as u can see
Developer response
posted 4 months agoEDIT: This appears to be due to a Firefox bug that will be fixed in the next major Firefox release. In the meantime, you can open the full-tab view and Drag and Drop will work there.
Thanks, I'm happy to hear you like it! I promise I didn't remove the drag-and-drop ability; if it's not working for you, would you mind opening an issue on GitHub and sharing a screen recording of what's going on? I'd be happy to look into it, it's certainly possible that some of the styling changes might've caused a problem I missed in my own testing. - Rated 5 out of 5by ietwat, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19637503, 4 months agoAn irreplaceable extension. The only two things I wish Tab Stash had are 1) the ability to pin groups to the top of the Tab Stash page and 2) the ability to collapse/expand all the folders in a group with one button. Those are tiny nitpicks, though.
Developer response
posted 4 months agoHi, thanks for the review! Pinning is an oft-requested feature that unfortunately doesn't exist yet, but you can expand/collapse all folders in a group today. Just Alt+Click (or Option+Click on Mac) the group's own expand/collapse button to expand/collapse all the sub-groups within. Hope that helps! - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18786431, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19634112, 4 months agoThis is the cleanest looking tab stash addon I know. It stays out of the way. You can get all tabs open with one click. One issue though, the new update added a lot of boxes to the tab UI "to make it match Firefox's style"?, and it looks too busy now. The older UI looked better. 5*
Developer response
posted 4 months agoYeah, Firefox completely changed their sidebar theming when they added vertical tabs, so for better or worse that's the style nowadays. I agree with you that it's busier than I would like (and I feel that way about Firefox's built-in sidebars too), but I want Tab Stash to feel as close to "built-in to Firefox" as I can manage. "Stays out of the way" is exactly what I'm going for!
If I hear from more folks (preferably on GitHub, where it's easier to have a back-and-forth conversation), I'll certainly consider trying to find a better balance between "makes good use of space / is clean" and "looks like Firefox".
In any case, thanks for the review, and I'm glad you're enjoying it! - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19623907, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Kog, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Leviii, 5 months agoExtremely good and powerful. I am using it as complimentary add-on for in-built bookmarks system and it has already considered many possible use cases like de-duplication, close stashed/saved tabs, highlight opened tabs, and it even updates order of bookmarks if the actual tabs are re-arranged before saving! I also recommend setting this extension page as homepage so all links are neatly organized and accessible. This wouldn't be possible without this add-on, anyone used to papaly will know exactly how useful this is. Also you can import links and file structure from copied list of bookmarks.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 15638270, 5 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Titus, 5 months ago