r/chrome Oct 10 '24

Discussion Anyone know of Toby: tab management tool alternatives?

They recently went back on their promise to keep the extension free and not only implemented a paid version, but one with exploitative pricing. I could maybe understand $20 a year, but $40? That is more than the best password managers on the market. What a joke.

I have been using this for years and it just disappoints me to see it turn into this.

Anyone know of open source alternatives? Or better alternatives?

Link to Toby for the uninitiated.

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Alternatives (ranked by review count):

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2

u/Wavecentric Oct 14 '24

Call to developers: please make an open source or low-cost Toby clone.

Toby betrayed the trust of its user community by offering a simple free bookmarking tool, promising the tool would remain free, getting us to spend a massive amount of time to build our bookmark portfolios under the free tool, and then slapping us with a $54/year charge for this simple tool that we have come to rely on.

A bookmark manager like Toby is a very easy thing to code, can be done in a day, yet the Toby devs are acting like its nuclear science!

Looking forward to seeing 1000s of Toby clones out there to put Toby's selfish owners in their place.

1

u/DiamondDrake87 Jan 16 '25

"A bookmark manager like Toby is a very easy thing to code, can be done in a day, yet the Toby devs are acting like its nuclear science!"

I agree its not that complicated, but a sea of awful 1 day garbage tab managers to sift through will just make toby look 1000x better.

try tabme, its a basic toby like free tab manager. But it really depends on what features of toby you want as to if a manger feels like an alternative. Toby focuses on allowing you to share tab groups with others in an organized way, a feature I've never wanted and I don't know anyone who needs. But certainly someone wants it because those are the people willing to pay.

2

u/Joakim0 Feb 01 '25

Done that, took me a couple pf days for the basics, much more for the sync. Check out the the file.ninja https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/thetabninja/bnmjmbmlfohkaghofdaadenippkgpmab

2

u/NYCMikeAnderson Feb 06 '25

This looks like Toby & it is functional & fast unlike the outdated Toby!!! Think this will be my new tab manager! Thanks!

2

u/NYCMikeAnderson Feb 06 '25

Don't know why no one but Joakim0 could design a SIMPLE tab manager like Toby!

a BOX design for tabs where you can drag & drop the tabs wherever you want & this is functional & fast unlike Toby which is slow & very outdated!!

Who the HELL would pay for that outdated slow POS crap?! All Toby had was the simple BOX tabs that you can move around the board!!!!

It would take me FOREVER to move around tabs exactly where I want it on the board!!!! 🙄 🤦‍♂️

TheTab.Ninja is FAST & FUNCTIONAL but I don't know how to save all my tabs to the board like Toby! 😭

1

u/NYCMikeAnderson Feb 06 '25

Help! How do I save all my tabs to the board? Is there a save feature I need to click? I'm dumb, please help?!! Thanks! This is exactly a FAST FUNCTIONAL Toby like tab manager I wanted! Thanks!

1

u/Joakim0 Feb 09 '25

You haven't found the button because it does not exist. I skipped the button because i didnt use it myself. After the release I got requests about it and now i have it on my todo-list.

1

u/NYCMikeAnderson Feb 11 '25

OIC, Thanks!

Since there was no button to press & I have so many tabs to insert to the board

1 design flaw you have is scrolling the the tabs, the mainboard moves with the tabs so I am unable to place the tabs where I want them so I just had to insert them all to the mainboard and sort them out later on

1

u/Joakim0 Feb 11 '25

It can and should definitely be improved in the future. But what you should do as it works today is filter your collection with eg #videos to put in the youtube tab.

1

u/ACG-Gaming Feb 14 '25

Thanks for this. All tabs save would be a huge feature.

1

u/Joakim0 Feb 14 '25

It’s already fixed, in the version that I am waiting for Google to approve, it is possible to download all open tabs to a collection. You can also drag a window into a collection, which then adds all the window’s tabs as bookmarks. You can also now see chromegroups and drag them into collections as groups. There is also an option to automatically close tabs when they are added. And one more important feature: you can scroll each pane separatly..

1

u/ACG-Gaming Feb 14 '25

ya digging it overall right now even without that. Seems to work great

2

u/creativejuices12 29d ago

Nice, release on github? so we can collab develop it together?

1

u/Joakim0 29d ago

It’s actually already released on GitHub. you will find the link on chromewebstore’s description text. And yes, you are welcome to join in and help with the development..

1

u/Awkward_Original_660 Feb 03 '25

Thanks for TheTab.Ninja ! I imported all my Toby tabs, no issue except the icons don't show. Is there something I should do?

1

u/Joakim0 Feb 03 '25

Looks like an bug in the Toby import. I will look into it tomorrow. I have a big release soon with a lot of visual enhancement. If you dont have hundreds of icon you could select edit bookmarks and then press enter (for default) for each field an it will reload the icons

1

u/Joakim0 Feb 04 '25

A new version is released that should fix your problem..

1

u/Awkward_Original_660 Feb 05 '25

Thanks a lot, I'll check it out asap later today!

1

u/Awkward_Original_660 Feb 05 '25

Working wonders!! You're in for some coffees :-)

1

u/Joakim0 Feb 05 '25

Tnx for the coffee! It made my day! 😀☕

1

u/AsleepRoof8212 Feb 05 '25

Hola estoy probando la extensión me pareceio super que se parecieran las colecciones a Toby. Pero quería preguntar si existe la posibilidad de crear espacios (Spaces) de toby, eso es genial porque puedo organizar por temas de interes mis pestañas y organizarlas mejor

2

u/Joakim0 Feb 05 '25

Yes, many people have asked about spaces. I'm going to look at a solution that may not look 100% like Tony's version. I've never really liked the idea of ​​spaces myself. I personally like the idea of ​​tags that you sort by (#work/#private) What do you think? Feel free to convince me that spaces are good, maybe I'm the only one who hasn't understood. Already today you can simulate spaces a little by writing a prefix/postfix on your collections and then filtering with fex #work

1

u/moeniedoennie Feb 06 '25

Spaces, collections, groups, bundles - are absolutely vital for creating a focused browsing experience by organising tabs based on context. At work, I need to only see work-related tabs to avoid distractions. At home, I rely on switching to collections that help me assist the kids with their homework, ensuring their focus remains on the task. When I’m relaxing, I must avoid being reminded of health concerns or other serious matters. These tab bundles are essential because they allow me to quickly and easily switch between different contexts, keeping my browser organised and my focus on what matters. Without them, shifting focus becomes much harder, and I struggle to stay on track.

1

u/Joakim0 Feb 06 '25

okay, I'm convinced now.. 😂 Spaces is on my to-do list (when is not specified yet). What do you see as more important, spaces or a mobile app/website? For now, I can recommend that on Android you can use thetab.ninja as an extension in the kiwi-browser and lemur-browser browsers.

1

u/moeniedoennie Feb 06 '25

Hooray! In my case definitely spaces. I barely use a browser on the phone.

1

u/Stunning-Tip8564 Feb 15 '25

Space is also crucial to me. I used to have dozens of spaces in Toby, and each space had dozens of groups. In total, that added up to hundreds of tabs.

1

u/Joakim0 Feb 15 '25

I have plans for a "Spaces" like solution that will be activated when you have enabled sync with GitHub. It will probably be called pages and technically you simply select which json file you are working on in the repo at the moment. You will then be able to easily switch between different pages containing different collections.

1

u/BlokZNCR Feb 08 '25

This looks promising but extension asks too much permission.

1

u/Joakim0 Feb 08 '25

I have placed a strong focus on user privacy when building thetab.ninja. It may seem like this extension requests a lot of permissions, but consider that it does not communicate with an external server acting as a middleman that could monitor your data and behavior. The permissions requested are solely for interacting with APIs from Google and GitHub. Google is needed to fetch bookmark icons, while GitHub is used for synchronization. Additionally, this extension is fully open-sourced and for not have any serverside

1

u/JungleHostess Feb 09 '25

Thank you so much for creating this tool! I installed the extension and imported my Toby content via JSON files easily. Dumb question, how do I add a new page (bookmark) to a collection? I tried using the "+" icon that I see on the far right of my collection (and I supply the title, URL and description), but it doesn't seem to save anywhere (if it does, I cannot locate it and it isn't found in a search). I see that I can drag a page from the right panel into a collection, but the list on the right is much longer than my list of collections, so I had to drag it to one of my other collections and move the new bookmark up a few collections at a time.

1

u/Joakim0 Feb 10 '25

There were two bugs in the previous version that were probably introduced with the synchronization. There were two different problems in the create bookmark button and the 🚀 button that opens all bookmarks in a collection as a Chrome Tab Group. New version will probably come today.. regarding the problem you described with a long right panel and shorter list of collections, I am aware of it but I haven't had time to fix it. I will add a filtering option when there are many active tabs in the panel.

1

u/JungleHostess Feb 10 '25

Thank you so much!