01 — Provenance
It remembers why
Every page arrives with its cause attached: the link you followed, the phrase you highlighted, the search you ran. A branching trail with reasons on the edges — not a list of URLs.
Chrome tab manager · nothing leaves your browser
The tab manager that remembers why.
Every tab manager groups your tabs, parks them to free memory and gives them back later. ContextTab is the one that also kept the trail — which link, which search, which highlighted phrase led to each one. Twenty tabs deep, that is the difference between a list and a map.
- 01 No account to start Install it and the map begins.
- 02 Nothing is uploaded The trail lives in your browser.
- 03 Free tier, for good Not a countdown to a paywall.
A working demonstration
Today's trail
6 live · 0 parked
Selected
Kubernetes memory leaks
The root of this trail — where the question started.
The real thing, in miniature. Nothing here is sent anywhere.
What it actually does
Three things, and nothing else.
Not a bookmark manager. Not a tab suspender. A record of how you got here.
02 — Memory
It parks what you are not reading
Freeze a branch and its tabs are discarded from memory but kept on the map, with their notes and scroll position. Thaw one and it comes back exactly where you left it.
03 — Handover
It hands you a document
One click turns a branch — or the whole session — into Markdown, with the trail, your highlights, your notes and a source list. Ready to paste into a doc, an issue, or your notebook.
What it does
Four gestures. That is the whole interface.
Showing keys for
Alt+hover a link
See where it goes, and branch before you leave
The trail is drawn before the page loads.
select any text
Highlight it, note it, or search it as a new branch
Three choices in an arc under the cursor.
Shift+click
Read it beside the page, not over it
No new tab, no lost place.
Alt+Shift+D
The whole trail, at the edge of the page
And out of the way again when you are done.
There is more underneath — park a branch and the memory comes back, thaw it to the same scroll position mid-sentence, ask AI for a brief of the whole branch, search across everything you have parked, keep due dates on notes, and export any branch as Markdown. What ContextTab is, in full →
Where your browsing goes
Nowhere.
That is the whole answer, and it is worth being precise about.
The map is local
Titles, URLs, notes, highlights and the shape of the trail live in your browser's own storage. There is no sync server, and no code path that could add one.
The account knows one thing
Signing in answers exactly one question — is this account entitled? The server stores a salted hash of your Google id, your email address, your subscription status and the dates. Never a page you visited. Itemised in full →
Your AI key stays with you
Summaries go straight from your browser to whichever provider you chose, with a key encrypted at rest under a passphrase only you know. Neither the key nor the text passes through us.
What people ask a tab manager for
Five things too many tabs make hard.
Every one of these has an answer in ContextTab, and four of them have an answer in most tab managers. The fifth is the one worth reading.
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How do I free memory without losing my tabs?
Park a branch. Its tabs are discarded from memory — the browser gives the RAM back — while the pages stay on your map with their notes and their scroll position. Thawing one puts you back mid-sentence.
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How do I get a set of tabs back later?
Every branch is restorable, and a branch can be a real Chrome tab group, coloured to match. Nothing has to be saved first: the map is being kept as you browse, not when you remember to press something.
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How do I find the tab I opened yesterday?
Search across everything — open and parked — by title, by address, or by the words you highlighted on the page. The parked ones are the point: a browser's own tab search cannot see them.
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How do I keep thirty tabs organised without doing the organising?
The tree builds itself out of what you actually did. Rename a branch if you want a better name, drag it if you want it higher, and otherwise leave it alone — there is no workspace to maintain.
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How do I remember why a tab is open?
This is the one nothing else keeps. ContextTab records the link you followed, the search you ran and the phrase you highlighted, so a branch comes back as a trail with reasons on it rather than a column of addresses you have to re-read to understand.
Pricing
Free for good. Pro when you want more.
Everything about how the dock looks and works is free, always. The subscription covers three things.
Basic
Free · always
No account, no card, no expiry.
- Lineage tracking up to 30 pages
- Parking, thawing and search
- Every part of the interface
- Markdown and JSON export
Pro
$3.99 a month
or $44.99 a year — $3.75 a month, about 6% less
Pro needs a Google sign-in — that is how a plan follows you to another machine. Signing in starts the free trial, and no card is taken to start one. After that a subscription renews automatically, monthly or yearly, until you cancel; the price in your currency, including any tax, is shown at checkout before anything is charged. Cancel in one click at any time — access lasts to the end of the period you paid for, then the account moves to Basic.
- No ceiling on the map, and trees merged across windows
- Notes on pages, with due dates and checklists
- AI summaries using your own API key
- Ten more colour modes, dark and light
Getting started
Three minutes. No account to start.
Install the extension
Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi — anything Chromium. It starts drawing your trail immediately: Basic needs no account and no card. Pro is the one thing that does, and only when you want it.
Open the dock
- Windows, Linux, ChromeOS
- Alt+Shift+D
- macOS
- ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+D
It is one shortcut, not two: Chrome maps Alt to ⌥ on a Mac, where the key is printed Option.
Or click the ContextTab icon in the toolbar. On a Mac it often starts hidden — click the puzzle piece at the right of the address bar and pin ContextTab. If something else has already taken the shortcut, change it at chrome://extensions/shortcuts.
Sign in when you want Pro
One click with Google. That starts the free trial, and your plan follows the account to any machine.
Questions people actually ask
Answered plainly.
Does ContextTab send my browsing anywhere?
No. Titles, URLs, notes and the shape of the trail live in your browser's own storage. There is no sync server. Signing in answers one question — is this account entitled — and the server stores a salted hash of your Google id, your subscription status and the dates. Never a page you visited.
Is ContextTab a tab manager?
Yes. It groups tabs, parks them to free memory, searches across everything you have open, and restores them where you left off — the things a tab manager is for. What it adds to the category is provenance: it also records which link, search or highlighted phrase opened each tab, so what comes back is a branching map rather than a list of addresses.
How is ContextTab different from other tab managers?
Most tab managers save the tabs: they collapse them into a list to free memory, snapshot a session so you can restore it, or sort them into workspaces you maintain. All of that is useful and ContextTab does it too. None of it saves how you got there. ContextTab records the link you followed, the search you ran and the phrase you highlighted, so a branch comes back as a trail with reasons on it. A branch can also be a real Chrome tab group, so it sits alongside what you already use rather than replacing it. What that looks like →
How is this different from a bookmark manager?
A bookmark records that a page exists. ContextTab records why you opened it: the link you followed, the phrase you highlighted, the search you ran. The result is a branching trail with reasons on the edges, not a flat list of URLs.
Which browsers does it work in?
Any Chromium browser — Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi and Opera. Sign-in uses the standard web flow rather than a Chrome-only one.
What happens when I cancel?
You keep Pro until the end of the period you have already paid for — that is what the money bought. After that the map falls back to 30 pages and everything else keeps working.
Do I need an account to use it?
Not for Basic — no account, no card, and it never expires. Pro is the exception: it needs a Google sign-in, because a subscription has to be attached to something in order to follow you to another machine. So: free without an account, paid with one.
Does the subscription renew by itself?
Yes — monthly or yearly, whichever you chose, at the price shown at checkout, until you cancel. Cancelling is one click in Settings → Manage billing and takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for. See the terms for refunds and, if you are in the UK or the EU, your 14-day withdrawal right.
Your research already has a shape.
ContextTab is just the first thing that draws it.