Tab Shelf

User Guide

Getting Started
The Basics
Getting Fancy

Settings

Click the gear icon in the Top Bar to open the Settings menu.

General

  • Select your preferred language.
  • Disable update notifications.
  • Disable action notifications.
  • Display Mode: Choose how Tab Shelf opens when you click its icon:
    • Side panel (default) — opens Tab Shelf in the browser side panel.
    • Pop-up — opens Tab Shelf as a small popup window.
    • Background (minimal menu) — opens a compact menu for accessing Grouping Rules, Saves, Duplicate Tabs, and Settings. Ideal when using Chrome’s native vertical tabs alongside Tab Shelf.
  • Optimize Tab Shelf for different browsers. Currently Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, and Brave are officially supported. This changes what URL is used for the new tab page when creating new tabs.

Syncing

  • Import or export your Tab Shelf settings.
  • Enable or disable syncing your Tab Shelf settings via your browser account.

Action Bar

  • Always hide the Action Bar, or only show the “New tab” button when not hovering over it.
  • Adjust the size of icons in the Action Bar.
  • Choose which buttons appear in the Action Bar.

Appearance

  • Theme: Choose between light or dark themes, or sync with your system theme.
  • Density: Adjust the spacing of the tab list (Roomy, Comfortable, Compact).
  • Accent Color: Personalize the look of the extension.

Side panel placement can only be changed in your browser’s own settings:

  • Google Chrome: Browser Settings > Appearance > Side panel position > “Show on left” or “Show on right”.
  • Microsoft Edge: The side panel position cannot be changed in Edge.
  • Brave: Browser Settings > Appearance > Sidebar > “Show on the left” or “Show on the right”.

Grouping Rules

  • Enable or disable grouping rules.
  • Configure whether grouping rules should also run on already-grouped tabs.

Performance

  • Enable or disable animations.

Saves

  • Configure what the Save button in the Top Bar does by default.

Search and Filtering

  • Hide the search bar.
  • Enable or disable searching across all windows (disabling this means only tabs in the current window are searched).

Sleeping

  • Configure how long to wait before background tabs are automatically put to sleep. Background tabs in this context are tabs that were opened but never visited — for example, if you open a link in a new tab and don’t switch to it within the configured time, it will be put to sleep.
  • Configure which sites should always or never be automatically put to sleep.

Pinned Tabs

  • Pinned Tab Display Mode: Choose how pinned tabs appear in the tab list (Default, Compact, or List mode).
  • Restore URLs: Configure specific URLs that pinned tabs restore to when woken from sleep or on browser startup. Each pinned tab can have its own restore URL set via right-click > “Set restore URL”. Enable “Auto-restore” per tab to navigate to that URL automatically when it wakes.
  • Auto-restore all pinned tabs on sleep: A global setting that enables auto-restore for all pinned tabs, even if individual tabs don’t have “Auto-restore” turned on.

Tabs

  • Customize which buttons appear when hovering over a tab.
  • Customize which menu entries appear when right-clicking a tab or a selection of tabs.
  • Configure how duplicate tabs should be handled (detect only, automatically delete, or do nothing).
  • Configure what double-clicking or middle-clicking a tab does.

Tab Groups

  • Customize which buttons appear when hovering over a tab group header.
  • Customize which menu entries appear when right-clicking a tab group header.
  • Enable or disable dropping a tab on a tab group header to add it to the group.
  • Configure what double-clicking or middle-clicking a tab group header does.

Windows

  • Customize which buttons appear when hovering over a window header.
  • Customize which menu entries appear when right-clicking a window header.

Tab Tray

  • Enable or disable the Tab Tray feature.
  • Configure the archive retention period (how long archived tabs are kept before being deleted).