Questions

Direct answers. If something is missing, email support@voxsanity.com.au.

Why isn't a tab showing up in my list?

A tab in another window, if you are on the free tier. Free lists the window you are working in, and Pro lists them all. Tab Ready also skips Chrome's own internal pages, and skips pinned or audible tabs if you have switched those options on.

In more detail:

• It is in another window and you are on the free tier. The free version lists every tab in the window you are working in. Pro lists every window.
• It is a Chrome-internal page: chrome://, an extension's own page, or devtools. Chrome does not let any extension see these, so this is a browser restriction rather than a choice Tab Ready makes.
• The filter box is hiding it. Anything that does not match what you have typed is hidden while you are typing. Clear the box to see everything again.
• You switched it off yourself. “Ignore pinned tabs” or “Ignore tabs that are playing audio” both skip tabs by design, and Pro's site filters narrow the list to the sites you chose.

Tabs that were already open before you installed Tab Ready do appear. They are listed as “was already open” rather than as ready, because nothing was watching them load. “Ready” means a tab finished while you were not looking.

How do I open the side panel?

Click the panel icon in the extension popup, next to the settings cog. You can also right-click the Tab Ready toolbar icon and choose "Open side panel", which works whether or not the button does.

The side panel shows the same list as the popup, but stays open beside the page while you work instead of closing when you click away. Clicking the toolbar icon still opens the popup, exactly as before. The two are independent, and neither replaces the other.

Is Tab Ready a tab manager?

It lists your tabs and lets you search and jump between them, so in that sense yes. What it never does is rearrange them behind your back: it does not close a tab, does not suspend or unload one, and never moves a tab out of a group you made. The one thing that moves tabs is Pro's optional auto-grouping, which you switch on yourself. It only ever picks up tabs that are ungrouped or already in a group Tab Ready made, and because Chrome requires the tabs in a group to sit next to each other, grouping does reorder that part of your tab strip.

Tab managers exist to reduce the number of tabs you have. Tab Ready assumes you opened those tabs on purpose and just wants to save you clicking through them to see which are done.

Does it suspend or unload tabs to save memory?

No. It never unloads a tab, and it does not change how Chrome manages memory. Tab Ready only watches whether a tab has finished loading.

If Chrome's own Memory Saver discards a tab you were tracking, Tab Ready notices when the tab comes back and lets it announce itself as ready again, rather than showing a stale row.

What does "ready" actually mean?

That the page has finished loading, which is the same signal Chrome uses to stop the spinner in the tab strip. It does not mean a video inside the page is ready to play. On a slow connection a page can report finished while scripts, images and other parts of it are still arriving. A tab can be marked ready a moment before it looks finished to you. Tab Ready reports what Chrome reports.

Knowing anything about the contents of a page would mean running a script inside it, and Tab Ready deliberately does not do that. See the permissions answer below.

Why does it need the "tabs" permission?

Because it shows you a list of your open tabs, and notices when one of them finishes loading. Chrome's narrower activeTab permission covers only the single tab you are already on, and only after you click the extension, so it cannot list your other tabs, and it cannot see one finish while you are looking elsewhere. Tab Ready asks for tabs, storage and sidePanel, and nothing else unless you turn on alerts or tab grouping.

Three permissions in total, and each does one job. tabs is what lists your tabs and notices one finishing. storage is needed because Chrome shuts an extension's background worker down after about thirty seconds idle, and anything kept only in memory would be lost. sidePanel is what lets the same list open in Chrome's side panel instead of the popup. None of the three permissions can read the content of a page.

What data does Tab Ready collect?

Nothing is collected by us, and nothing is transmitted anywhere. On your own device it does store one record per open tab, including that tab's full web address and page title, in Chrome's local extension storage, for as long as the tab stays open. There is no account, no analytics, no sync and no server that receives anything about your browsing.

A tab's record lives as long as the tab does, and is deleted when you close the tab. The full detail is in the privacy policy.

Does it read the pages I visit?

No. It runs no script on any website. There are no content scripts in the extension at all, on the free tier or the paid one. It reads the loading state, the title and the favicon, which Chrome already has.

What is the difference between free and Pro?

Free lists every tab in the window you are working in, with ready tracking, the badge and search, with no cap on how many tabs. Pro is a one-time US$7.99 payment that widens the list to every window and adds desktop alerts, the stale flag, auto-grouping, duplicate detection and site filters.

The full feature-by-feature comparison is on the Pro page. The free tier has no cap on how many tabs it lists, and one is not going to be introduced later.

What counts as a duplicate?

Two tabs count as duplicates when they point at the same page once Tab Ready has ignored the things that do not change which page it is: capitalisation in the site name, http against https, a leading www, a trailing slash, and the usual tracking parameters a link picks up on its way to you. Every copy is flagged equally, so none is labelled the original, and nothing is ever closed for you.

Deliberately narrow, because the costly mistake here is merging two pages that are not the same one. Anything after a # is kept, since sites like Gmail use it to mean a different page. Query parameters that are not on the tracking list are kept too, so two different search results stay two results. Pinned tabs, tabs playing audio and tabs excluded by your own site filters are not matched at all. Duplicate detection is a Pro feature, and it looks across every window.

Is Pro a subscription?

No. It is a single payment of US$7.99 and there is nothing to cancel. Refunds are self-service within 14 days.

You do not have to email anyone or explain yourself. The refund page handles it.

Which browsers does it work in?

Chrome 116 or later, on Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS. It is not published for Firefox or Safari.

Do the alerts need extra permissions?

Yes. Desktop alerts and tab grouping each need one extra Chrome permission, and Chrome asks only at the moment you switch that feature on. Neither is requested when you install.

You can take those permissions back whenever you like. The three permissions the extension itself asks for never change, whether you buy Pro or not.