Crystal — Tab Bubbles
Too many tabs isn’t really the problem. Losing your train of thought is.
Crystal is a Chrome extension that lets you save a whole browsing session — however messy — as a named “bubble” with one click. Reopen it later and your tabs come back exactly as they were, loading quietly in the background instead of dumping twenty tabs on you at once.
What makes it different: Crystal automatically tracks which tab opened which, so when you reopen a bubble you get a visual map of how your research actually branched — not just a flat list. Click any tab in the map to jump to it. Hit a dead end? Prune it straight from the map, and choose whether to take its sub-branches with it or set them loose as their own bubble.
Built for people who keep too many tabs open on purpose — because closing them feels like losing the work.
Features
- Save your open tabs as a named bubble in one click, right from the toolbar
- Reopen bubbles without the memory hit — tabs load only when you actually click into them
- A visual map of how each tab branched from the last, not just a flat tab list
- Add notes to any tab in the map
- Prune individual tabs or whole bubbles, with a safety net for anything they led to
- Update a bubble later to fold in new tabs instead of starting over
- Export and import a full backup any time — your data is never locked in
Installation
Crystal isn’t on the Chrome Web Store yet. To try it locally:
- Clone or download this repository
- Open
chrome://extensions in Chrome
- Enable Developer mode (toggle, top right)
- Click Load unpacked and select this repository’s folder
- The Crystal icon will appear in your toolbar
Usage
- Save a bubble — click the Crystal icon and choose “Crystallise open tabs” to save your current tabs as a new bubble
- Reopen a bubble — click a bubble on the board to reopen its tabs; they load lazily as you click into each one
- View the map — an open bubble shows a tree of how each tab branched from another; click a node to jump to that tab
- Prune — remove a tab (or a whole bubble) from the map; you’ll be asked whether to remove its sub-branches too or spin them off as a new bubble
- Update a bubble — fold newly opened tabs into an existing bubble instead of creating a new one
- Backup — export your bubbles to a file at any time, and import them back on another machine or after a reset
Privacy
Everything happens locally in your browser. Crystal has no server, doesn’t track you, and never sends your tabs, titles, or browsing history anywhere.
Full privacy policy: https://redmehdi2-8.github.io/privacy-policy.html