A Chrome extension that turns tab overload into a calm workspace. Keep your important tabs readable and reachable
in a dedicated sidebar — while the native tab bar stays clean. Pending official Chrome Store approval.
Honest note: This is a real project under active development. It’s functional and useful today, with a few known bugs being tightened up. The goal is stability + polish, not feature bloat.
Built to reduce tab clutter without fighting the browser. Simple controls. Real tabs. Calm workflow.
Keep your important tabs visible and readable in a dedicated panel, even when your native tab bar is overloaded.
Clicking a sidebar entry activates the actual Chrome tab. No fake bookmarks, no duplicate pages, no weird proxy UI.
Chrome can’t truly hide tabs — so the extension uses a dedicated Blue tab group kept collapsed to minimize clutter.
Shorter decision-making. Less hunting. Your “work tabs” stay anchored while temporary tabs come and go.
Light/dark friendly styling so the panel looks at home with your browser and your system preferences.
Started as a portfolio experiment. Evolved into a real tool worth polishing: stability, performance, UX clarity.
Intend to Make player embed youtube as well as continues play as user moves about.
Tab cleanup, left to user at the moment, planning logic regarding Unique tab system.
Not yet confirmed, but conflicts with other extensions are suspected. May be part of my bug loop.
Ethical monetization: free core, optional support. No guilt. No lockouts. Just sustainability.
The hook is immediate: tabs get tiny, people lose focus, and switching becomes annoying. Unique Sidebar fixes the pain fast.
What changes for the user: less clutter, faster switching, fewer mistakes, calmer browsing.
Keep “core” tabs in the sidebar. Let everything else be temporary without chaos.
Readable titles reduce accidental closes and “where did that tab go?” moments.
Less tab-hunting means fewer context switches and smoother task flow.
Chrome tab groups are ephemeral. Fix is to derive groupId from a live tab before updating, and silently ignore missing groups.
Chrome auto-expands a group when a tab inside becomes active. Mitigation: re-collapse immediately after activation (best-effort).
Use CSS variables + classes (avoid inline styles) so the UI updates instantly on theme changes.
Keep goals tight: stability, consistency, and UX quality. Add features only after the foundation is solid.
Guard all tab/group operations, prune stale IDs from storage, and avoid caching groupId as truth.
Reduce flicker during activation; improve micro-interactions in settings; ensure accessible keyboard navigation.
Collapsing groups doesn’t reduce RAM/CPU; a park/discard mode could. Only if users ask for it.
Chrome doesn’t allow extensions to truly hide individual native tabs. Unique Sidebar uses a dedicated Blue tab group kept collapsed to minimize clutter while keeping tabs open and accessible from the sidebar.
Collapsing a group mainly reduces visual clutter. Tabs remain loaded. True resource savings requires discarding/suspending tabs or “parking” them — which is a separate, optional feature concept.
This project aims to stay simple and respectful: no ads, no tracking, and no forced accounts. Optional support is available for users who want to keep development going.
Unique Sidebar is built and maintained by an independent developer. The core features are free and will remain available to everyone. If this extension saves you time or improves your workflow, you can choose to support its continued development — optional, one-time, no obligation.