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How many browser tabs do you have open right now? If you’re like most people who spend their workday in front of a PC or Mac, the answer is probably “too many to count,” and you’re staring at a row of icons that offer only the faintest clue of what’s on the tab associated with each one.
Good luck remembering what’s on each page when all you can see are favicons for each tab
Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNET
When tab overload strikes, the usual cure is to declare tab bankruptcy, close your browser window, and start over. Sometimes your browser even does it for you, unexpectedly (and usually at the most inconvenient time). When that happens, you end up scrolling through your browser’s history to pick up where you left off or searching frantically to find that factoid you need for the report that’s due before the end of the day.
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But I found a better way.
More than just a tab manager
Plenty of browser extensions promise to help you manage too-many-tabs syndrome, but most just offer an alternative view of all your open tabs — lists or thumbnails, for example — instead of tiny favicons. And they don’t do a thing to help you keep all those tabs organized.
That’s where a remarkable web-based service called Workona shines. It offers a simplified way to view and organize browser tabs and bookmarks into separate groups (called spaces) that you can organize by project, category, date, or whatever strikes your fancy. The following screenshot, for example, shows a group of tabs and resources I saved when researching streaming music services.
A Workona space contains open tabs and bookmarks (called resources) that can be saved for later use.
Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNET
Each space backs up to the cloud, so you can reopen those tabs even if your browser crashes, and you can sync those spaces across multiple devices and easily share spaces with co-workers. You can also include cloud-based documents and add notes and tasks to keep projects on track.
Extensions are available for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox on all major desktop platforms. To extend its capabilities, you can also connect it with a wide range of cloud-based services (like Slack, Google Drive, and GitHub).
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Workona is developed by a small team based in San Mateo, California. The company has a solid roster of corporate clients, and on the few occasions that I’ve needed tech support, I’ve gotten fast, reliable help. I’ve been using it for more than five years, and it’s enhanced my productivity more than any other tool I use.
Workona’s free tier includes the full tab manager and allows you to create up to five spaces, with unlimited docs, links, tasks, and notes in each space. The Pro version costs $7 per user per month and supports unlimited spaces with priority support, session backups, and additional premium features. Team and Enterprise plans are available for businesses.
How it works
The combination of a cross-platform browser extension and cloud service is uncanny in its ability to remember every open tab. I’ve organized my bookmarks and projects into spaces, which sync across multiple PCs and Macs. If I shut down the browser, my open tabs are restored when I restart, allowing me to pick up where I left off.
It’s easy to keep projects organized by dragging pages between spaces. You can pin frequently used pages to a space and organize them into groups of resources so that they’re easily accessible even after you close the tab. The coolest feature is the ability to integrate cloud-based apps into a space, allowing you to create a new document, start a Zoom call, or work with an existing project in GitHub by clicking an icon in the sidebar on the left.
After you add a cloud app from this list, its icon appears in the sidebar on the left.
Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNET
One bonus of Workona’s tab management features is improved performance. The software suspends tabs in the background so they don’t hog memory. You can configure the maximum number of tabs to allow in memory (by default, this number is set to 25) and automatically restore tabs in a suspended state so that they’re ready to go when needed.
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Even with a five-space limitation, the free version of Workona can make a major dent in your tab-overload problem.
Collaboration features for your team
What really sets Workona apart from plain-vanilla tab management software is its support for collaboration features. With a Team or Enterprise plan, you can share a space with other members of your organization or use an email link, and you can specify whether your co-workers are able to edit that space’s layout or not. One nice usability tweak for newcomers is a group of sample spaces based on your business type: Law firms, for example, get document management templates that can be customized and duplicated for each client. Those spaces also offer the ability to integrate task lists neatly into spaces.
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The glue that ties all these features together is an Omnibox-style search box that allows you to find any open tab, space, or saved resource. It also includes command-line options to create new resources on the fly.
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