Tab-less

This extension allows you to disable tabbed browsing. When windowed mode is set, your browser will open windows wherever possible rather than use tabs.

This repository is a fork of iainbeeston/tab-less. Unlike the original, this version allows you to toggle between windowed and tabbed mode by clicking the icon or by using a keyboard shortcut. It lacks some features of the original:

• Clicking the icon does not close all unfocused windows. Rather, it toggles between windowed and tabbed mode.
• The icon badge does not display the number of open windows. This makes it easier to see the icon, which changes to indicate the current mode.

Installation

Chrome Web Store

This extension can be downloaded via the Chrome Web Store.

Building from source

1. Install Node.js and npm
2. Install Grunt: npm install -g grunt-cli
3. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/ei14/tab-less-togglable.git
4. Enter the repository folder: cd tab-less-togglable
5. Install the dependencies: npm install
6. Build the extension: grunt
7. In Chrome, go to chrome://extensions and enable Developer mode in the upper right corner
8. Install the extension. There are two different ways to do this; choose one:
   1. Load unpacked. Useful for testing and quick installation.
      • Click Load unpacked
      • Navigate to tab-less-togglable/dist and open
   2. Pack and install. Produces a .crx file that enables you to easily install the extension on multiple browsers.
      • Click Pack extension > Browse
      • Navigate to tab-less-togglable/dist and open
      • Click Pack extension. This will produce a file called dist.crx which can be used to install the extension on any Chrome-like browser. Feel free to rename this file to something more descriptive, such as tab-less-togglable.crx.
      • Run Chrome with the file.
        • From the command line this looks like chrome tab-less-togglable.crx
        • On a GUI, you may be able to simply double-click the .crx file

Configuration

There is not much to configure, but you can set a keyboard shortcut that switches between tabbed and windowed mode.

In Chrome, go to chrome://extensions/shortcuts and scroll to Tab-less Togglable. Click the pencil icon and type your desired shortcut.

Usage

Upon being installed, the extension begins in tabbed mode. This mode does absolutely nothing, allowing tabs to be created without being converted into windows.

To switch to tab-less mode, click the icon, or use a keyboard shortcut if you set one. This immediately converts all open tabs into separate windows. In tabbed mode, for every instance a new tab would be created, an appropriate new window is created instead.

To switch back to tabbed mode, click the icon (or shortcut) again.

Note: switching back to tabbed mode does not collapse the individual windows back into tabs. If you have many tabs open and switch to tab-less mode, all the tabs will be separated into individual windows; there is no way to undo this without manually recombining the windows one by one.

FAQs

• Why would you want to disable tabs?

Because I sometimes find it difficult to find the tab I'm looking for. Tabs can sometimes obscure the browsing experience, and I sometimes find it easier to browse the web when I can see all of my windows at once. Most modern operating systems can arrange windows elegantly and efficiently, making tabs defunct in many cases.

• If you don't like tabs, then just don't use them! You don't need an extension for that

Increasingly, browsers force tabs on you by default. It does not provide an option to default to using windows rather than tabs. This extension lets you override that behaviour to open windows instead, to make it seamless for users like myself.

• Why should I use Tab-less-togglable rather than New Tab, New Window?

1. Tab-less-togglable does not require any access to your browsing history at all (most extensions require access to your browsing history or the current page you're viewing).
2. It's designed to be as light-weight and simplistic as possible.
3. There's no magic, it just moves tabs to a new window, whenever they're opened, whenever windowed mode is on (using the default settings for a new window).

• Why is this a fork of iainbeeston/tab-less instead of a pull request?

1. iainbeeston/tab-less contains features that this extension removed for the sake of convenient toggling.
2. iainbeeston/tab-less is more minimalistic and does not rely on browser storage like this fork does.
3. iainbeeston is a much more competent JavaScript developer than I. iainbeeston/tab-less is well optimized and comes with unit testing, whereas this fork has room for improvement.

Bugs and limitations

The parent extension, Tab-less, was built for the old Manifest V2 standard, but between the release of Tab-less and Tab-less Togglable, the Chrome store has stopped accepting extensions that use Manifest V2.

With the new Manifest V3, there is a known bug with Chrome that prevents the service worker code from running for more than 30 seconds of time where the user is inactive. Working around this bug required a bit of a messy hack, and it sacrifices the ability of the extension to continue running when there are no website tabs open --- e.g. only chrome:// tabs, only file:// tabs, etc.

If you notice that the extension isn't converting tabs to separate windows like it's supposed to, click the icon twice (or use the shortcut twice).

Contributing

All the code for this extension is open-sourced and can be found online at https://github.com/ei14/tab-less-togglable. I'd be happy to receive any feedback, hear about any bugs or accept any pull-requests for new code at that address.

I will merge all relevant changes from the upstream repository, so if your contributions apply to both this extension and iainbeeston/tab-less, consider pushing to iainbeeston/tab-less first.