Session Tabs
Install Session Tabs
There are two ways in. One is a single click. The other takes about two minutes and works right now, without any store.
Pick one
Which one is for you
From the Chrome Web Storenot published yet
One click, automatic updates, no warnings — the normal way to install anything in Chrome. This is where Session Tabs is headed.
Install the folder yourselfworks today
Chrome can load an extension straight from a folder on your own computer. It is the same extension doing the same thing — you point Chrome at it instead of downloading it from a store. Nothing is installed system-wide, and you can remove it in one click.
About two minutes
Install it yourself, step by step
Do these in order. If a step looks different on your screen, the troubleshooting list at the bottom covers the usual reasons.
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Download the folder
A small ZIP file — well under a megabyte, no installer, nothing that runs on its own.
Version 1.12 · what changed
Installing this way means no automatic updates. Extensions installed from a folder are never updated by Chrome. When a new version comes out, nothing will tell you — you would come back here, download again, and replace the folder. The Store route updates itself silently.
The extension has a Check for updates link in its footer that opens the release notes, so you can compare against the version you have. It never checks on its own — it makes no network requests at all.
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Unzip it somewhere you will not delete
Right-click the file, choose Extract All, and you will get a folder called session-tabs. Documents is a good home for it.
This part matters. Chrome reads the extension from that folder every time it starts. If you later move it, rename it, or delete it, the extension stops working. Put it somewhere permanent now and leave it there.
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Open Chrome’s extensions page
Click the address bar, type this, and press Enter. A link on a web page cannot take you there — Chrome only allows it when you type it yourself.
chrome://extensionsClick the box once to select the whole address, then copy it with Ctrl+C.
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Turn on Developer mode
It is the switch in the top-right corner of that page. Flip it on. This is what lets Chrome load an extension from a folder.
Top-right of chrome://extensions -
Click “Load unpacked”
Three buttons appear on the left once Developer mode is on. Click the first one.
Top-left, just under the heading -
Choose the session-tabs folder
A file picker opens. Select the folder itself and click Select Folder — do not open it first, and do not pick a file inside it.
How to know it is the right folder. Looking inside it, you should see a file called manifest.json sitting right there. That is the folder Chrome wants.
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Pin it to your toolbar
Click the puzzle-piece icon at the right of Chrome’s toolbar, find Session Tabs in the list, and click the pin beside it. Now the icon stays where you can reach it.
The puzzle piece, then the pin -
That is it — try it
Right-click any tab and choose Add tab to new group, give the group a name, then click the Session Tabs icon and hit Save. Close everything, reopen Chrome, click the icon, and press Open. Your tabs come back.
Two honest caveats about installing this way.
Chrome sometimes shows a notice asking whether to disable developer-mode extensions. That is Chrome’s standard message for anything not installed from its store — it is not a warning about this extension in particular. Dismiss it and Session Tabs keeps working.
To update later: download the new ZIP from this page and replace the contents of
your session-tabs folder. Then open Session Tabs from the toolbar
and click Reload at the bottom of the popup — that is the
whole update. (That link only appears on folder installs, because it is the only
kind that needs it. If you would rather do it the long way, the refresh arrow on the
Session Tabs card in chrome://extensions does the same job.) Your saved
sessions are stored separately and survive the swap.
Before you install
What Chrome will say it wants
Chrome shows these two lines for Session Tabs. Here is exactly what each one is for.
“Read your browsing history.”
That is Chrome’s wording for reading the addresses and titles of your open tabs. It is the whole product: to save a session, it has to know what is open. It reads them when you click Save, writes them to your own computer, and does nothing else with them.
“View and manage your tab groups.”
This is how it puts your tabs back into a real, named, coloured Chrome tab group when you click Open.
No account, no cloud, no tracking
Session Tabs has no sign-in, sends nothing anywhere, and contains no analytics. It cannot phone home even by accident: it never asks for permission to reach any website, so the browser itself would block the attempt.
Everything you save lives in Chrome’s own storage on your computer, and leaves only if you click Export backup yourself. Read the privacy policy.
If something looks wrong
Troubleshooting
I do not see a “Load unpacked” button
Developer mode is still off. It is the switch in the top-right corner of chrome://extensions — turn it on and the three buttons appear on the left.
It says the manifest is missing, or could not be loaded
The wrong folder was selected. Open the folder you picked: you should see manifest.json, popup.html, popup.js and some icon files sitting directly inside it. If you instead see another folder, go one level deeper and pick that one.
It installed, but I cannot find the icon
Chrome hides new extensions behind the puzzle-piece icon at the right of the toolbar. Click it, find Session Tabs, and click the pin so it stays visible.
Chrome keeps asking me to disable developer-mode extensions
Expected, and not specific to this extension — Chrome shows it for anything loaded from a folder rather than from its store. Dismissing it does not remove or disable Session Tabs.
It stopped working after I moved or renamed the folder
Chrome loads the extension from that exact location, so moving it breaks the link. Put the folder back, or go to chrome://extensions, remove the broken entry, and run Load unpacked again on the folder’s new home. Your saved sessions are stored separately and are not lost.
How do I remove it?
Go to chrome://extensions and click Remove on the Session Tabs card. If you want to keep your saved sessions first, open the extension and click Export backup — removing an extension also clears the data it stored.
Does this work in Edge or Brave?
Yes — both run Chrome extensions, and the same steps apply (Edge calls its extensions page edge://extensions). Opera is the exception: it does not have the tab-group feature this extension is built on.