How I Snapped and Built My Own Tab and Bookmark Manager - Tabme

Oleg Plotnikov — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 09:07:53 +0000

The Birth of the Problem

…some time ago.
As a manager of managers, I oversee various teams, each with their own focus areas and projects. Each project comes with its own collection of Miro boards, Google Docs, Confluence pages, Jira epics, and a heap of other important links.

I realized I needed a way to organize all this information without constantly pestering colleagues on Slack with “Hey, could you share the link to…?”

Searching for a Solution

I started with browser bookmarks. Technically they work — but the interaction experience is far from perfect.

Built-in bookmarks UI requires real effort: moving the cursor, clicking around, and opening multiple folders to locate what you need. It’s tedious and time-consuming. In 2024, UX should be more frictionless.

Next, I explored a series of existing Chrome extensions for tab and bookmark management. Eventually, I landed on Toby, which seemed promising.

Pros:

A visual interface that makes it easy to find what you need without too many clicks.

Cons:

Overloaded UI.
Slow performance.
Limited bookmarks per screen, requiring lots of scrolling.

I used it for quite a while, but over time, its drawbacks started outweighing the benefits.

And right around this period, my inner developer surfaced, demanding change. It was clear: I needed to build something myself — not just to solve the problem but also as a creative outlet for my sanity 😀

Later, I tried the Arc browser, but the UX it offered didn’t solve the original problems. The sidebar holds too little useful information, and you still have to scroll and expand the lists to find the desired bookmark. I wanted to have all the key links for my projects on one screen.

The Solution

This is how my pet project Tabme was born — the simplest and most convenient bookmark manager for me🙂

Everything is visible on one screen without extra clicks — maybe just a bit of scrolling if necessary (since scrolling doesn’t add cognitive load).

The interface feels natural when finding bookmarks. It is visually intuitive (color coding helps a lot!), and the focus is on the content rather than the UI itself.

Here is an example of what my space with key bookmarks looks like in reality:

Features

Let me share how Tabme helps me manage my work effectively:

Effortless Bookmark Management:

Quickly find all key documents for every project, even years-old ones.
No need to delete bookmarks after a project ends; just hide them. The search works across hidden bookmarks too!

Intuitive Design:

Minimum interface, maximum focus on content.
Visual aids like color coding to make navigation fast and simple.

Enhanced Functionality:

Keyboard-friendly: Navigate bookmarks with ease.
Global search: Find bookmarks, open tabs, and even browser history.
Duplicate tab closure: No more clutter.
Session saving: Save open tabs into a folder for later.
Hiding unused bookmarks: Keep the screen clean and focused.
Dark mode: Because all love dark mode.

Tech Stack

It’s nothing fancy: React + TypeScript.
The app is very lightweight, with no other dependencies.
You can check out sources here in github repo

Where to Try it

Website
Chrome Store Page

A Note About New Tab Behavior

Not everyone likes it when an extension overrides Chrome’s new tab page. For those users, I created a separate version of Tabme that doesn’t replace the new tab. You can pin it as the first tab and use CMD+0 (or CTRL+0) to access it.

Link to Tabme Chrome Extention version without new tab override.

What’s Next?

I’ll keep improving Tabme based on my own vision and your feedback.

I already have a lot of improvements planned. However, the biggest next milestone is adding the ability to synchronize bookmarks between devices.

Currently, it is free to use. Even if I add billing in the future, the current functionality will remain free forever.

Try it out, and let me know what you think! I'd be very really happy to get a feedback

DEV Community: Oleg Plotnikov