Tab groups are really handy for – well, grouping tabs. But that they cannot be persisted across sessions seems really odd. Yes, it is possible to have Brave “Continue where you left off” but this forces the user to always be cognizant of the order in which multiple windows are closed – because the last window closed is the one that gets restored. Everything else is lost.
Here’s my use case: I regularly use tab groups to organize related pages for easy retrieval. I do a lot of research and can end up with way too many tabs in a single window such that the tabs are so small it isn’t easy to see what each one is. So, I periodically open a one or more additional Brave windows when I want to research a particular topic that I know is short-term; i.e., something I wouldn’t care to retain for later. I then have to be careful in which order I close the Brave windows to ensure that last one I closed is the one I want to have restored the next time I open Brave; i.e., the one with my tab groups and other regularly opened tabs.
More than once – like just a moment ago, I end up forgetting and closing Brave because I get sidetracked into some other issue (e.g., something that requires a reboot, or whatever) and I lose everything, having to rebuild those tab groups everytime.
If you haven’t already seen, here’s a post at Google support that might interest you. The flag they are talking about (not really useful at this time) is in brave://flags. The last reply has an extension suggestion that might interest you if you aren’t already using one. Hopefully, they will continue to develop the save tab option. Could be really useful!
Thank you for the suggestion! I went to that post, searched for “groups” and enabled the "Tab Groups Save"option. This looks like what I requested: Right-click on a tab and there is now a “Save group” button. So, a group can be saved or not.
NOTE – Be aware there is an unexpected side-effect: If you are in the habit of creating folders in the bookmarks bar (as I have long done), after enabling this option, any of these are no longer folders but some kind of “special” group and it is no longer a folder icon but a button icon. If you click that button, instead of opening the folder and showing a list of the items within, it results in every item in that group being opened! However, you can right-click the button and select an item from within that button.
So, be very careful not to left-click on them – especially if it contains a lot of items; what a mess!
UPDATE: After using this for a bit, while it is still the solution to the feature request, I’ve decided to just stick with my folders-in-the-bookmarks-bar. This is easier to manage and doesn’t have the side-effect mentioned above.
Yes, I’m checking out the Session Buddy extension. It looks like it might be exactly what I want. Again, thanks.
Sharing what I’ve found for those who may view this thread:
Session Buddy is nice but it is local to a specific machine – which kind of makes sense as it is saving a working session. So, I’ll be going back to look at Saved Tabs since, I expect, they are synced.
I tried the Tab Groups again but the option to Save is not persisted – very strange given that it is supposed to save them. If I enable the flag, reload Brave (as it states), then create a tab group, right-click and enable “Save group” it doesn’t seem to do anything different normal. If I close the tab group I cannot find any way to recall it or open it again. If I close Brave with the Tab Group showing, it appears upon next time I open Brave (since I have my settings to start where I left off). However, if I right-click the tab group after re-opening Brave, the “Save group” option is NOT enabled; I have to click it again – so what’s the point?
NOTE: The experimental settings are not sync’d across devices; it has to be explicitly enabled on each device.
Wish it had been the perfect solution! Maybe that extension referenced in the link would work better!