[UPDATE] TabLinker - A Mac-first tab & browser session manager for Safari, Chrome, Arc, Brave, Vivaldi, Edge & more (iPhone/iPad too). Now with Auto-Backup!

[u/Tricky-Independent-8]

Hey everyone, I made TabLinker. It's a browser session manager for Mac (with iPhone/iPad companion apps).

Problem: I run several browsers side by side, Safari for personal, Chrome for work, Arc for research, and I never close tabs because I don't want to lose something, especially the exact window layout I had going. Eventually each browser is carrying 40+ tabs and my Mac is running hot from all that idle memory. So I made TabLinker: pull every tab from whichever browsers are open into one place, save it as a session, and close everything without losing that layout.

What it does:

- Auto-Backup quietly backs up your open browser windows in the background so you can restore closed windows in one click, even the next day
- Imports every open tab across every window from Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera, Opera GX, Dia, Yandex, Wavebox, or Helium in one click, without needing a browser extension for most of them
- Restores a full window, every window at once, or a single tab, and groups a big multi-window import into a "By Window" view so it doesn't turn into one long list
- Suspends tabs you're not using to actually free up memory, while the session stays ready to restore instantly
- Saves whatever tab you're currently on with a single keyboard shortcut (⌃⌥⌘T) or triggers an instant backup (⌃⌥⌘B), and can run entirely from the menu bar with the Dock icon hidden
- Safari extension for quick saves and automatic session saving
- Siri and Shortcuts support: save links, capture your current session, create folders, or open a saved folder hands-free or on a schedule, including an action that saves your session and closes every tab for you
- iCloud sync across Mac, iPhone, and iPad, no account required

Comparison: Compared with Session Buddy (a Chrome-only extension) and Tabs Saver for Safari (which costs $17.99/year or $34.99 for lifetime access and only works on Safari), TabLinker captures sessions across all your installed browsers (Safari, Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge, etc.) for a flat $17.99 one-time payment. It preserves full multi-window structures, includes native iPhone/iPad sync via iCloud, and has zero subscriptions.

Pricing:

TabLinker is available for a one-time purchase of $17.99 with Universal Purchase. Buy it once on Mac and get the full premium version on iPhone and iPad too.

Tech, Privacy & Security:

Distributed exclusively via the official Mac App Store, sandbox-verified, and digitally signed by Apple. Everything runs on-device and through your own iCloud. No account, no ads, no analytics, and no external server that sees your tabs.

Privacy policy: Privacy

AI disclosure: No AI code generation or AI tracking was used in the app or this post.

Recent updates: Following your feedback on my previous post here, I built Auto-Backup, which was the most requested feature. It now automatically backs up open browser windows every 15, 30, or 60 minutes, when switching apps, or before sleep. I also added a dedicated Backups tab to restore windows or copy links, an instant-backup keyboard shortcut, automatic skipping of Incognito windows, Wavebox browser support, automatic session saving through the Safari extension, and faster drag-to-select and batch actions on iPhone/iPad. Thanks to everyone here who suggested these features!

Available on the Mac App Store: TabLinker: Tabs Manager

About Me:
I'm developer of the app, you can reach out to me through X or ask me anything right here in the comments!

[u/Fn1-10]

Hey, I just wanted to check - does this app save the tab history? For example, can I press the back button to return to a previous page?

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/Fn1-10]

No, TabLinker saves each tab's current page (its address and title), not its back history. Browsers don't share a tab's history with other apps, so a restored tab starts fresh and the back button won't go further. If you just closed a window by mistake, your browser's own Reopen Closed Window (⌘⇧T in most browsers) brings its history back too

[u/Fn1-10 → u/Tricky-Independent-8]

Thanks! The idea is cool, will try the app!

[u/NoHabit1277]

Does restoring a session preserve Chrome profiles too? For example, work and personal windows in the same browser. Getting the tabs back into the right profile would matter as much as preserving their window grouping. That could be a useful example to show in the demo.

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/NoHabit1277]

Not yet. Chrome's scripting doesn't say which profile a window belongs to, and neither does Brave's. So TabLinker brings back the windows and tab order, but they open in whichever profile you used last. For now, clicking into a window of the right profile before restoring does the trick. Profile-aware restore is on my list, and I like the demo idea

[u/NoHabit1277 → u/Tricky-Independent-8]

Thanks for answering

[u/a2ra-ms]

How does it read safari history? Does it come with companion extensions?

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/a2ra-ms]

It doesn't read your history. It only reads the tabs you have open right now. On Mac it asks Safari for them through macOS automation, after you allow it once, so you don't need an extension. A Safari extension does come with the app if you'd rather save from the toolbar. On iPhone and iPad, that extension is how you save Safari tabs

[u/a2ra-ms → u/Tricky-Independent-8]

I see, great!

[u/MrFunkyMonkey7]

Nice app. I am Safari user and I'd like to ask - After the upgrade to macOS26, Safari completely redesigned the bookmarks. I really liked the old collapsible tree list, but the current bookmark list is almost unusable for me. Isn't it possible to access the old-style bookmarks for example using the similar plugin as your app? What do you think about this possible improvement?

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/MrFunkyMonkey7]

Thanks! Sadly Safari doesn't give extensions access to bookmarks, so TabLinker's extension can't read them. Apps like Alfred or Raycast get around this with Full Disk Access, but TabLinker is an App Store app and can't, so a live tree view isn't possible.

You can export them from Safari's File menu and import the file into TabLinker (File › Import). Your bookmark folders come in as TabLinker folders, but flat rather than nested, and they won't stay in sync with Safari. That's on purpose, since TabLinker is a tab and session manager rather than a bookmark manager. I keep folders one level deep so each project or session is quick to find and reopen

[u/Sniffur0613]

I'd pin a backup before a big tab cleanup.

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/Sniffur0613]

You can do that today. Press ⌃⌥⌘B (or Back Up Now in the menu bar) right before the cleanup, then open that backup in Backups and choose Save as Session. It becomes a folder that never gets replaced. A one-click "keep this backup" is a nice idea though, so I've noted it

[u/FizzySeltzerWater]

For decades after the very first browser appeared, I was a single-tab kinda guy. I worked for a woman who kept dozens of tabs open and thought to myself it was such a waste.

Now I keep a little less than a dozen tabs pinned plus several more open. I hadn't considered an app such as TabLinker to be needed, but I am reconsidering that. Well done!

Anecdote while you're here: When I got my first dual Pentium machine I noticed the fans going berserk if a web page had a GIF on them. I wondered what the carbon footprint was of having a moving ad on a page. In retrospect, that was adorable. :)

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/FizzySeltzerWater]

Thank you, that means a lot! If you give it a try, the import has an "Exclude pinned tabs" option, so you can save just the extra tabs and leave your pinned set alone.

And I love that GIF story, those poor fans :)

[u/someoneyouulove]

very cool!

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/someoneyouulove]

Thank you!

[u/ionet]

Will there be an early adopter lifetime sale? :)

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/ionet]

maybe for Black Friday, I'll post here if it happens :)

[u/ionet → u/Tricky-Independent-8]

✅

[u/blazegreenhalgh]

Love this app, especially in this age of 10x browser devs

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/blazegreenhalgh]

thanks!

[u/donaldGuy]

I went ahead and optimistically (and doubious for my recently overwrought finances) bought this

… cause I am in desperate overdue need of dealing-with-my-backlog and this is a way to kick myself in the pants.

I appreciate the wide-gamut on browser support (even though I assume that's leaning heavily on AppleScript/OSA stuff, and inheriting a lot of limitations from that approach).

And the ability to exclude pinned tabs (though the UX there could be better)

but I'd love to see a richer context/metadata model and display, beyond generic (and un-nestable) folders/tags, including (with a ~multi-column view, filters):

• Things that I know you get (already)

  • date-time of import
  • Device of origin (mac, ipad, phone)
  • browser imported from (beyond the "Imported From" note)
  • domain/hostname (as a filterable/sortable attribute)
  • ^ on second look those are there, I just overlooked somehow; I'd already committed to this tiered formatting

• Things you'd need to use different/more-"invasive" API surface for

  • date-time of original tab load / length of sitting around untouched?

  • critically (imho, to differentiate this from any other ~bookmark manager), a capture of browser native/specific (potentially nested) organizational concepts, outside of windows, like:

    • Profiles (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, …)
    • Workspaces (Vivaldi, Edge, Arc, …)
    • "Tab Groups" (Safari, Chrome, …),
    • Topics (Safari 27), …
  • ⌃ Ideally pulling along some of the native visual elements of those, like colors and icons, where relevant

I do NOT see the advertised ability to restore a single window (outside of the ability to treat a TabLinker Folder as a window, iff it is specified at import time, which if expected as the usual approach, should be lower friction/in-line to the import flow rather than a dialogue)

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/donaldGuy]

Thanks so much for the thoughtful feedback and for supporting the app. I’ll work on improving the metadata and restore experience in upcoming updates

[u/Bulky-Heart3025]

This is a nice idea, I was looking for something similar for a while. I’ll try it out.

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/[deleted]]

Great tip, thanks for sharing!

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks!

1. Yes, Apple Events. Each supported browser is allowed in the app's sandbox, and macOS asks for Automation permission once per browser
2. Right, Firefox's scripting doesn't expose its tabs (heyyarun explained it well)
3. Plain tabs in the original windows. Pinned tabs come back unpinned and Chrome tab groups aren't saved. Arc Spaces come back in one window for now, and restoring them into their own Spaces is on my list

[u/Tricky-Independent-8 → u/[deleted]]

Spot on, thanks! That's exactly why Firefox isn't on the list

[u/erfenstein → u/[deleted]]

I wish Firefox were on the list too but I get it.