Browser tabs are a blessing and a curse. They are easily opened, rarely closed fast, and tough to keep organized. You quickly end up with dozens of tabs in a single window and then what?
You need to switch back and forth, you struggle to navigate between tabs, your computer slows down, and usually you don’t even need half the tabs. And if you do try to keep your tabs organized, you may often find yourself manually pulling out sets of tabs into a new window. What a hassle!
If this sounds like you, I have something to make your life easier.
Introducing Tab Scissors
Tab Scissors is a dead simple Chrome add-on that can separate two sets of tabs and display them next to each other.
You need a minimum of two tabs for the add-on to work. Select a tab and click the Tab Scissors icon in the top right of your Chrome window. The window will be split into two side-by-side windows that take up the same space as the original window. All tabs to the left of the selected tab will be in the left window. The selected tab itself and all tabs to its right will be in the right window.
A slight exception from this rule occurs when you select the left-most tab. In this case the selected tab will become the window on the left, while all other tabs are moved to the window on the right.
Basically, that is all there is to Tab Scissors.
Scenarios in Which Tab Scissors Will Come In Handy
1. Bookmarking a Set Of Tabs For Later
Maybe you have done some research and want to get back to the results later? However, you have a lot of other tabs open in the same window that you don’t want to bookmark. Make sure the tabs you want to bookmark are on one side, use Tab Scissors to separate them from the rest, then bookmark all tabs as a new folder, close the window, and instantly free up system resources.
2. Comparing Two Sets Of Tabs Next To Each Other
You are planning a vacation and need to make up your mind between two possible destinations. You want to decide based on flights, accommodation, local culture, things to do, etc. You have a selection of tabs open with the relevant information, but need to see it side-by-side to compare. That’s a perfect job for Tab Scissors. Be sure to maximize your window and quickly sort the tabs, before you apply Tab Scissors.
If you are running Windows 7, you could use an Aero Effect to achieve a similar result: simply drag one window to the left of your screen and another to the right and the two will be shown side-by-side. Also check out my article on PowerResizer to improve this feature further and Better Manage Your Open Windows.
Further Reading
Tab Scissors is one of our Best Chrome Extensions. Check out other highly recommended tab management addons for Chrome. I have previously introduced Tabs Expose and Awesome New Tab Page here:
- Get An Awesome New Tab Page For Google Chrome
- Navigate Multiple Open Browser Tabs with Ease using Tab Expose
The perfect match for Tab Scissors is Tab Glue. This add-on mends all open Chrome tabs into a single window and maintains the original tab sort order.
How do you manage browser tabs and are there any add-ons you can recommend for this task? Can you think of more uses for Tab Scissors?
Image credits: Scissors via Shutterstock
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Hide 22 Comments
i have found another addon [Chrome], that helps organize tabs, it is called Too Many tabs, and you can organize tabs, add tabs to a folder to open later, and make tab folders so that with one click you have those 50 of your favorite sites open at once
thanks
That’s a good one, thanks for adding it! Here is the link for anyone interested in trying it: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/toomanytabs-for-chrome/amigcgbheognjmfkaieeeadojiibgbdp
Thank you USA933 and Tina. I will be trying both out as this could be very helpful with my new job. :)
Looks interesting. Might have to try it out. Still looking for a way to keep tabs permanent
Thanks! That makes things a little easier now!
Like this. Useful.
This is a helpful post! Thank you! Added both Scissors and Glue, from same publisher!
Thank you!
Márcio Guerra
Very welcome, Márcio!
Hmm.. interesting! Should try it out…
Wow, I’ve been needing this for ages!
You wouldn’t want if there are 100 tabs.
You are funny. Hahahaha. What about 500 tabs? :)
I’m often close to 100 tabs and have to force myself to bookmark and close a few. So many interesting things to read…
one of the important issues that give chrome its power is the big no of add-ins that add more fetures to it
pretty useful!
tab manager is good as well for saving entire sessions
I open a lot of tabs in my browser. This will surely help me in saving some time. Thanks for sharing!
This is really really useful. I often get bogged down with too many open tabs! Thank you for sharing
It doesn’t do the side-by-side window arrangement but do people know the following trick for Chrome?
Ok so you can drag tabs around and “tear” them into their own window one by one, but you can also do this with multiple tabs in a Chrome window.
To select multiple tabs which are next to each other, simply click the first tab you’re interested, hold down SHIFT and then click the last tab you are interested in. All tabs in between will be selected. You can then move them around as a group or tear all of them into a new window at once.
To select individual tabs and add them to a selection, hold down CTRL and click the tabs you want to select.
You can also use a combination of SHIFT and CTRL operations for ultra flexible and quick selections.
Once you know these shortcuts, if you’re a big tab user, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without them!
Awesome tip, Mark. Why didn’t I know that? Thank you for adding this!
This sounds rather interesting and will have to give it a try. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.