Auto Group Tabs

A Chrome/Brave extension that automatically organizes your tabs into groups by domain.

What It Does

• Auto-groups tabs by root domain (e.g., github.com, stackoverflow.com) as you browse
• Creates collapsible tab groups with colored headers for quick navigation
• Searchable popup to quickly find and switch between tabs
• Keyboard-first navigation: Ctrl+Shift+K to open, arrows to navigate, Enter to select

Problem It Solves

Managing 50+ tabs is a nightmare. You end up with scattered tabs from the same site, no way to quickly find what you need, and a chaotic tab bar. This extension solves that by:

• Automatically grouping tabs from the same domain into collapsible sections
• Making all your tabs searchable via a quick popup
• Giving each domain a consistent color, so you can visually identify clusters at a glance

Installation

1. Clone or download this repository
2. Open chrome://extensions (or brave://extensions in Brave)
3. Enable Developer mode (toggle in top-right)
4. Click Load unpacked and select the project folder
5. You can now open the search popup by clicking the extension icon or pressing Ctrl+Shift+K (Windows/Linux) / Cmd+Shift+K (macOS)

Usage

Opening the Search Popup

Method	Shortcut
Toolbar	Click the extension icon
Keyboard (Windows/Linux)	Ctrl+Shift+K
Keyboard (macOS)	Cmd+Shift+K

Navigating the Popup

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Navigate between results
Enter	Switch to selected tab
Escape	Close popup

Grouping Behavior

• Group All Tabs — Manually group all open tabs by domain
• Ungroup All — Remove all tab groups
• Auto-grouping toggle — Enable/disable automatic grouping for new tabs. This preference is persisted to chrome.storage.local.
• Groups are created per-window (tabs from the same domain in different windows get separate groups)
• Root domains are extracted intelligently: docs.github.com → github, api.stripe.com → stripe
• Special URLs (chrome://, about:, extension://) are ignored and not grouped
• localhost, 127.0.0.1, and .local domains are grouped together under "localhost"

Architecture

├── manifest.json       # Extension manifest (Manifest V3)
├── background.js       # Service worker: handles tab grouping logic
├── background.test.js  # Tests for background logic
├── popup.html          # Popup UI
├── popup.js            # Popup interactivity & search
├── popup.css           # Popup styles
├── popup.test.js       # Tests for popup utilities
├── searchUtils.js      # Shared search utilities
└── icons/              # Extension icons

Key Behaviors

• background.js listens to tabs.onCreated and tabs.onUpdated to auto-group tabs
• The popup queries chrome.tabs.query() and chrome.tabGroups APIs directly
• Domain-to-group mapping is cached in memory to avoid redundant Chrome API calls
• Groups are collapsed by default (collapsed: true) to keep the tab bar tidy

Running Tests

node background.test.js
node popup.test.js

The test suite verifies:

• Tabs from the same domain in one window are grouped together
• Same domain in different windows creates separate groups
• Stale group references are handled gracefully
• about:blank and special URLs are not grouped
• Tab URL updates trigger re-grouping
• Tab filtering (case-insensitive title search)
• Search result grouping by tab group
• HTML escaping and text highlighting

Permissions

Permission	Purpose
tabs	Read tab URLs and titles for grouping
tabGroups	Create and update tab groups
storage	Persist the enabled/disabled toggle

Browser Compatibility

Tested on Brave (Manifest V3). Works on Chrome 89+ and other Chromium-based browsers with Manifest V3 support.