Tabs

A small Electron browser with a fixed, configurable set of site tabs in a left sidebar. Clicking a sidebar entry always shows the same tab — no endless-tab creep — and a Home button resets that tab to its configured URL. Sessions/cookies persist, so you stay logged in across restarts.

Built for the workflow where you live inside a handful of web apps (GitHub repos, Gmail, issue trackers) and want a keyboard-driven, predictable way to switch between them.

Features

• One persistent tab per configured site; switching never spawns new tabs
• Back / forward / reload / home (reset-to-home-URL) + address bar per tab
• Logins persist (persist:tabs session partition)
• In-app shortcuts: Ctrl+Alt+1..9 or Ctrl+1..9 to switch; Ctrl+PageUp/Ctrl+PageDown to cycle
• Graphical "Manage sites" dialog: add / rename / reorder / delete, saved to a JSON config
• Single-instance lock: running the launcher twice focuses the existing window (so a GNOME keyboard shortcut can raise the app on Wayland)

Install (Linux / GNOME)

npm install
npm run build
npm run install-app

That writes:

• ~/.local/bin/tabs-browser — launcher that invokes the built app
• ~/.local/share/applications/tabs-browser.desktop — so Tabs appears in GNOME Activities

To bind a key that focuses the app from anywhere (works on Wayland because GNOME dispatches it with an xdg-activation token):

Settings → Keyboard → View and Customize Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts → +

• Name: Focus Tabs
• Command: gtk-launch tabs-browser
• Shortcut: your choice

On Wayland, Electron's globalShortcut API cannot grab system-wide keys — registering the shortcut at the GNOME compositor level via Settings is the supported path.

After editing code, rebuild with npm run build; the installed launcher runs the rebuilt out/ in place — no reinstall needed.

Configuration

Sites live in ~/.config/tabs-browser/sites.json:

{
  "sites": [
    { "id": "github", "name": "GitHub", "url": "https://github.com" },
    { "id": "gmail",  "name": "Gmail",  "url": "https://mail.google.com" }
  ]
}

IDs are stable React keys (preserve them when editing by hand to avoid reloads). Or use Manage sites… in the sidebar — the GUI auto-generates IDs and writes the file for you.

Development

npm run dev        # electron-vite dev server with HMR
npm run build      # production bundle into out/
npm run typecheck  # tsc across main, preload, renderer

License

MIT.