Organize, find, and manage your work in the browser
More and more of our work is now being done in the browser. If you aren't using a tab manager, you're likely getting distracted, overwhelmed, and frustrated with the array of tabs and chaotic environment. Use a tab manager to get focused and organized.
Amidst a global pandemic most of our workforce went online and fully remote. People use a web browser everyday to send emails, read articles, design apps, communicate live across borders, buy and sell billions worth of commerce, watch videos, and do everything else that is possible in a browser.
That list, as you can tell, is very short, and your average day probably looks something like that, only more varied and longer. Work, personal, and everything in between is done the browser.
Most people don’t just have a job: they have personal hobbies, side-projects, a second job, school, and more to work on.
If you aren’t actively organizing your work in the browser, it quickly becomes hectic and unwieldy.
Here’s a look at why you should be using a tab or bookmark manager, if you’re not already.
Tab/Bookmark Manager: An app, extension, or add-on that helps people organize their work in the browser beyond what native bookmarking tools are capable of in web browsers designed for browsing, not working.
Most work (Communicating, writing, reading, monitoring, designing, building, teaching, creating, selling, …) is done in the browser. Not to mention your personal browsing habits as well. If this is left to its own, you’ll end up with 20–30+ tabs open all belonging to different domains and contributing to a massively distracting and cluttered work environment. Too many tabs can really slow you down.
Simple use of tab organization and bookmark management can help to diffuse the situation, and keep you focused while you work in the browser.
When multiple things fight for your attention, its likely they will all get a small piece of it, and none will benefit. It’s better to knock things off your docket one by one, than to try and juggle far too many things at once. Despite that many people say that they can multi-task, it actually just isn’t possible.
If you have a job, a hobby, side-project, or personal interest, getting all of these mixed up into one browsing habit is detrimental to your productivity. Luckily, getting ahead of this is a matter of recognizing that your work is multi-faceted, and that you just need to be cognizant of how you work.
Every browser on the market was designed for browsing: mindless ‘surfing’ of the web. Browsers were designed for everyone not anyone. What that means is the goal of most web browsers is to let you freely and injuriously use the web. Look things up, click on links, and accumulate. Thats all. When you try to use the web browser for work, you likely fall into this trap as well. Opening and collecting tabs is easy, its satisfying, and we all think ‘I’ll need this later’.
Before you know it you’ve wasted a good hour doing a whole lot of nothing and you have no idea how you got there. A bit like falling into a youtube rabbit hole. The problem is, how do you refocus? You have tabs open related to all the things you might do in a day, all of which you swore you would need, but can’t remember if you actually do… so you just keep them all open?
Its a time-sucking trap to fall into.
If you are going to work in the browser (rhetorical) then you’ll need some system or form of tab management to combat this vicious cycle.
People have tried and tried again to solve this problem with their current setups but still fall into similar and parallel issues. Let’s talk about what doesn’t really work, and why a tab/bookmark manager is the best solution.
The strategy: Using multiple browser windows to organize your work.
This is probably the first thing people think of when they run into organization issues in the browser. It’s the simplest and most obvious solution.
While it might seem like a good idea, you quickly run into issues. First of all, it’s hard to navigate. How do you find your “Work” window or your “Reading list” window? Or even a tab within those windows.. How many times have you miss-clicked the wrong window? What happens if chrome or your computer crashes? Not to mention that using multiple windows is a huge resource hog on your computer, magnifying the too-many-tabs-using-too-much-ram problem.
One of the biggest downfalls of the multiple window strategy for tab management is that your work isn’t syncable. What if you want to resume work from another computer? Another browser? You’re hooped.
The strategy: Using multiple desktops as a means of separating work.
This strategy is popular among people who require lots of resources (Apps, browser tabs, documents, etc.) open at any given time and is especially quick to switch between desktops on Mac (A simple swipe). However, this strategy also suffers from some of the downfalls of using multiple browser windows — they’re not restorable, syncable, or shareable. Which means that if you want to work off of another computer or browser you won’t be able to. You can’t restore a session or workspace after you’ve shutdown your computer or it crashes. In the end, using multiple desktops as a means of tab and work management is not a long term solution.
The strategy: Using different browsers (Eg. Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc.) to split up your work and keep things separated.
This is also a popular one as of recent because other small and large browsers are getting more attention. The idea is to use, for example the Chrome browser, for anything work related and say Safari for anything personal, etc. etc. This is a cool way to quickly separate your work, but it has a detrimental effect on your productivity. To illustrate, if you’re using multiple different browsers to manage your work, they all have different UI’s, shortcuts, hotkeys, tendencies, features, and behaviours. Memorizing and actually using multiple different browsers effectively is impossible. Moreover, what happens if you’re in your ‘Work” browser and find something that you’d like to read or save to your ‘Personal’ browser? Eventually your work gets all tangled up and using different browsers fails you.
The strategy: Using different profiles within a browser to keep things separate.
This was Google Chrome’s, Firefox’s, etc. attempt at giving people a work management solution within the browser — a much needed solution to a prominent problem. Unfortunately, the feature isn’t fully fledged out, and profiles weren’t designed for busy people who need to rotate and switch contexts seamlessly throughout their work day.
Switching profiles is slow and completely detached. There is no way to handle work collisions (While working in work type ‘A’ and you run across something needed for ‘B’, eg. personal browsing or a side project). For these reasons, it isn’t recommended to use browser profiles as your tab/bookmark/work management solution in the browser.
The strategy: Do nothing. Just let tabs accumulate.
Believe it or not this is probably the most used strategy. For obvious reasons it is not very effective and always results in a chaotic mess of hundreds of tabs and windows. There is no organization, it serves as a constantly distracting array of tabs, and causes people to lose focus, time, and productivity.
If you haven’t already put it together, you should be using a tab manager or tab organizer.
The reason you should use a tab manager or tab organizer is because browsers were designed for browsing, not productivity. A tab manager was designed to help you organize your work and be more productive in the browser.
A tab manager can do things that other apps can’t — Like close or open multiple tabs at once. They can make saving your whole window, or just select tabs easy. Managing sessions, multiple facets of work (Work, personal, side-project, school, etc.), and tabs is what a tab manager was designed to do.
Not only that, but a tab manager addresses the issues the other strategies have, discussed above. A tab manager can make your work syncable, shareable, restorable, organized, and easy to navigate. Something that no other tool or strategy can do. If you work a lot in the browser, using a tab manager or tab organizer is a no brainer.
Here at Partizion, we’re designing a tab manager for these exact reasons. Working in the browser is broken, and we want to help.
Partizion was specifically designed to help you organize, find, and manage your work in the browser.
We’ve made it clear that a tab manager or tab organizer is necessary, but not all tab managers are made equal. Lots of tab managers are out of date, have been abandoned, or even sold to new nefarious owners. At Partizion, we believe in long term sustainability. Partizion is paid only for this exact reason. This means that Partizion will be around in a year from now and beyond. It means we only build the features that people really care about and need. It means we never sell or share your data, we’re transparent, and we care about your privacy, productivity, and ability to work in the browser.
There are many great Tab Managers out there. Partizion was built however, because we felt there was still a long unsatisfied need for a tab manager purposely built for productivity, privacy, collaboration, and sustainability.
Most tab managers are free, eventually get abandoned, or use disruptive ads to support the maintenance of the app. Partizion uses a subscription model to support the ongoing development, maintenance and improvement of the extension and app. This means that users are supporting and guaranteeing the life of Partizion — Partizion will be around in a year from now and beyond because of its amazing supporters. Like everyone else, we don’t like paying for subscriptions either, but we chose this model because it means we can build an amazing tab manager without all the other garbage — No ads, no sharing or selling user data, no nefarious investors or buyers, and we won’t just abandon the project in 6 months from now because of lack of support.
If you choose to use Partizion and support it, you’ll be supporting a startup on a mission to make working in the browser delightful.
Partizion was built because everyone seemed to suffer from the same problem. More and more work was moving to the browser and there was no way to organize this. Partizion was conceived, designed, and continuously improved to make working in the browser productive, intuitive, and enjoyable. If you have ever thought “Why does this work this way?”, or “why can’t I do this?” while working in the browser, Partizion was designed for you.
Everyone who tries Partizion can at least appreciate the time and effort that has gone into building an amazing tab organizer. We take every customer request, question, and contact seriously and pride ourselves in our customer support. Our reviews speak for themselves, and it is clear we care about your opinion.
When you're ready to use the best Tab Manager for chrome, try Partizion.
