TabView

A Chrome extension that lets you see all your tabs as visual previews in a single grid -- monitor RAM usage, multi-select tabs, create groups, and merge windows.

• Visual tab previews -- Captures screenshots of all tabs in the background (no disruptive tab switching)
• Per-tab RAM usage -- See JS heap memory for each tab, captured alongside screenshots. High-memory tabs (100+ MB) are highlighted in orange.
• Multi-select -- Checkbox on each tab card for selecting multiple tabs at once
• Tab grouping -- Select tabs and group them with a name and color using Chrome's native tab groups
• Discard tabs -- Unload selected tabs from memory without closing them to free RAM
• Merge windows -- One-click button to combine all Chrome windows into one
• Close tabs -- Hit the X on any card or bulk-close selected tabs
• Drag & drop reorder -- Drag cards to rearrange your actual Chrome tab order
• Click to switch -- Click any preview or title to jump straight to that tab
• Live updates -- Grid stays in sync as you open, close, or move tabs
• Auto-capture -- Previews start capturing automatically when you open TabView

TabView isn't on the Chrome Web Store -- install it manually in about 30 seconds:

1. Download this repo:

   • Click the green Code button above, then Download ZIP
   • Or clone it: git clone https://github.com/cfranci/TabView.git

2. Open Chrome's extension page:

   • Go to chrome://extensions in your address bar

3. Enable Developer Mode:

   • Toggle the Developer mode switch in the top-right corner

4. Load the extension:

   • Click Load unpacked
   • Select the TabView folder you downloaded/cloned

5. Pin it (optional but recommended):

   • Click the puzzle piece icon in Chrome's toolbar
   • Pin TabView so it's always one click away

Tip: clone the repo (don't download the ZIP) so you can update with one command later.

Chrome doesn't auto-update extensions loaded in Developer Mode, so TabView checks GitHub itself: when a newer version is on the production branch, the toolbar icon shows an ↑ badge and a blue banner appears at the top of the TabView page.

To apply an update:

• macOS: double-click update.command in the TabView folder (pulls the latest and rebuilds the trackpad helper).
• Windows: double-click update.bat.
• Or manually: run git pull in the folder.

Then click Reload now in TabView's banner (or hit Reload on the TabView card in chrome://extensions).

swipe-helper/ adds a three-finger trackpad swipe to move between tabs. Build it with swipe-helper/build.sh, register the on/off bridge with swipe-helper/install-host.sh, then open swipe-helper/TabSwipe.app. Toggle it from the extension's right-click menu, and tune sensitivity with swipe-helper/tabswipe-config.py low|medium|high. See swipe-helper/README.md.

Click the TabView icon in your toolbar. A new tab opens with a grid of all your tabs.

• Click a preview -- switches to that tab
• Click the X -- closes that tab
• Drag a card -- reorders the tab in Chrome
• "Refresh Previews" -- re-captures all screenshots

Each tab card displays its JS heap usage on the right side of the info bar. Total memory across all tabs shows in the header. Tabs using more than 100 MB get an orange badge to flag them as heavy. Memory is captured during the screenshot pass -- click "Refresh Previews" to update both.

Check the box on the top-left of any tab card to select it. A floating action bar appears at the bottom with three options:

• Group -- Creates a Chrome tab group from selected tabs. Enter a name and a random color is assigned.
• Discard -- Unloads selected tabs from memory without closing them. The tab stays in your tab bar but its content is freed from RAM. Chrome reloads it when you click on it.
• Close -- Closes all selected tabs.

Click Merge Windows in the header to pull every tab from all other Chrome windows into the current window.

MIT