Tab Out

Keep tabs on your tabs.

Tab Out is a Chromium extension that replaces your default new tab page with a beautiful, responsive dashboard of everything you have open. Tabs are grouped cleanly by domain, with essential homepages (Gmail, X, LinkedIn, GitHub, etc.) elegantly isolated at the top. Close tabs with a satisfying physics-based swoosh and dynamic confetti bursts.

No servers. No tracking. No accounts. 100% offline.

Originally based on the open-source Tab Out project by Zara Zhang and adapted here as a personal customized build under the MIT License.

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Install with a coding agent

Send your coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, etc.) this repo and say "install this":

https://github.com/washi4/tab-out

The agent will walk you through it. Takes about 1 minute.

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Features

• Domain Grouping & Homepages — See all your open tabs grouped by domain. Crucial landing pages (Gmail, X, YouTube, GitHub, etc.) are elegantly isolated at the top.
• Tab Sleep & RAM Saver (💤/❄️) — Spot frozen tabs instantly by their breathing sleep badges. Unload resource-heavy pages with one click or via keyboard, accompanied by a crystalline freeze chime.
• Workspace Session Manager — Group selected open tabs into distinct, named custom workspaces. Restore, manage, or delete them in the right sidebar.
• Keyboard Maestro (Vim Style) — Mouse-free master navigation! Select tabs with Tab/Shift-Tab, Vim j/k, or Arrows, then hit Enter to focus, d to close, s to save, or f to freeze.
• Autocomplete Command Palette — Press / to focus the search bar, filter open tabs instantly, and use keyboard arrows to jump to them.
• Global Quick Search Popup & Shortcut — Tap Alt+Shift+T (or ⌥⇧T on Mac) on any web page to instantly summon a clean floating search popup. View your open tabs grouped by domain/localhost port, close tabs instantly with hover scale-up buttons, and navigate entirely with your keyboard (Arrows, Tab, Enter)!
• Theme Switcher — Seamlessly toggle between "Sage Paper" (warm organic light mode) and "Cyber Deck" (matrix cyberpunk dark mode), complete with distinct synthesizer sweeps and matching confetti bursts.
• Local Profile Customizer — Click your avatar in the left-top corner to instantly change your name and select from beautiful pixel emojis, featuring tactile Web Audio arpeggio feedback.
• Pixel Tab Pet Companion — Mochi the Cat (Sage Green) or Byte the Robot (Cyber Deck) lives on your tab, reacting to your page cleanups, saves, and profile edits with cute animations and speech bubbles.
• 100% Local & Private — Pure extension structure with zero server setup or external trackers. Your data never leaves your machine.

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Manual Setup

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/washi4/tab-out.git

2. Load the extension in Chrome or Edge

1. Open Chrome and go to chrome://extensions or open Edge and go to edge://extensions
2. Enable Developer mode (top-right toggle)
3. Click Load unpacked
4. Navigate to the extension/ folder inside the cloned repo and select it

3. Open a new tab

You'll see Tab Out.

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Customizing Shortcuts

Tab Out comes with Alt+Shift+T (or ⌥⇧T on Mac) as the default global shortcut to summon the search popup from any page. You can easily customize this keybinding to your liking:

1. Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://extensions/shortcuts (or Edge and go to edge://extensions/shortcuts).
2. Scroll down to find Tab Out.
3. Click inside the input field next to "Activate the extension" (or click the edit pencil icon).
4. Press your preferred key combination (e.g., Ctrl+Shift+Space, Alt+O, etc.).
5. Select "Global" instead of "In Chrome" if you want to summon your tab-search panel even when your browser is in the background!

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How it works

[ Open a New Tab ]
        │
        ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Tab Out groups open tabs by domain  │
├──────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Homepages isolated inside top card  │
└──────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                   │
         ┌─────────┴─────────┐
         ▼                   ▼
┌──────────────────┐   ┌──────────────────┐
│  Click tab title │   │  Close card/tabs │
│   to focus/jump  │   │ (swoosh+confetti)│
└──────────────────┘   └──────────────────┘

Everything runs inside the extension. No external server, no API calls, no data sent anywhere. Saved tabs are stored in chrome.storage.local.

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Tech stack

What	How
Extension	Chrome Manifest V3
Storage	chrome.storage.local (100% Offline)
Sound	Web Audio API (real-time synthesis, 0 files)
Animations	Native CSS keyframes + physics-based confetti particles

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License

MIT