TabShoal

Your tabs, grouped by site, automatically. A Chrome extension: open a second tab from a site and the two sit together in a tab group named after it, like "🐟 github"; close one and the group goes away.

• Groups by site, so mail.google.com and docs.google.com share a "🐟 google" group.
• Leaves your own groups alone, and any tab you drag out of one of its groups.
• Never touches pinned tabs or tabs in a split view.
• Works per window and never moves a tab to another window.
• Nothing leaves your browser except a daily licence check.

$10, £10 or €10 a year after a 14-day free trial. Licensed under GPL-3.0.

How it groups

• A site gets a group once it has 2 tabs in a window (you can raise that). When a group drops below the minimum, its last tab is ungrouped.
• A tab follows its site: navigate from one site to another and it moves to that site's group.
• Groups TabShoal makes start with 🐟 so you can spot them, and carry an invisible marker at the end of their title. A group without the marker is yours, even one you name with a 🐟, and TabShoal ignores it and every tab in it.
• Drag a tab out of one of its groups (or use Chrome's Ungroup) and TabShoal leaves that tab alone until you press Regroup all. Drag it back in and it's tracked again.

The panel and settings

Click the toolbar icon for Regroup all, Pause on this window, your licence, and Settings:

Setting	Default
Minimum tabs per group	2
Sites never to group, e.g. localhost	none
Group names: 🐟 google or 🐟 google.com	🐟 google
Collapse groups you're not using	off
Keep groups at the start (right after pinned tabs)	off
Closing a tab goes back to the tab that opened it	on

Permissions

tabs (read tab URLs to know their site), tabGroups, storage (your settings) and alarms (the daily licence check). No access to page content, and no host permissions.

Building

Needs Node 24 or later and pnpm.

pnpm install
pnpm -F @tabshoal/extension build   # → apps/extension/dist
pnpm -F @tabshoal/extension test

Then chrome://extensions → Developer mode → Load unpacked → the apps/extension/dist folder.

The source is GPL-3.0, so anyone may build it themselves.

Trying it

With the build loaded:

1. Open two tabs of one site: they form a group named after it. Open a third: it joins.
2. Navigate one of them to another site: it leaves the group; with one tab left, the group goes.
3. Pin a grouped tab: it stays pinned and out of any group. Unpin it: it rejoins.
4. Drag a tab out of a TabShoal group: it stays out, even after it navigates. Regroup all puts it back.
5. Make a group of your own: TabShoal leaves it and its tabs alone.
6. Turn on Pause on this window: new tabs there stay ungrouped. Turn it off: they group.
7. In Options, add a site you have grouped to Sites never to group: its group dissolves. Switch the group names to 🐟 google.com: groups are renamed. Turn on Collapse groups you're not using: every group but the current tab's folds. Open one from its header and close its tabs one by one: it stays open until you switch tabs. Turn on Keep groups at the start: TabShoal's groups line up after the pinned tabs, your own groups after them; drag one of them away and it swims back.
8. Open a tab from another one, then close it while you're on it: you land back on the tab that opened it, if that's still open in the window and you were on it in the last 10 minutes. Turn off Closing a tab goes back to the tab that opened it and Chrome picks the next tab instead.