# Index

> Spaces for Chrome. Index is a free Chrome extension: a sidebar for all your web destinations, arranged into spaces that bring up what you need and hide the rest. No account, no server, no network requests.

## Why Index

Browsers with built-in workspaces, such as Arc, Zen and Vivaldi, ask you to leave Chrome: your extensions, your profile, your sync and your passwords with it. Index gives Chrome the same idea, and keeps everything else as it is. Tab managers such as Workona and Toby want an account and keep your tabs on their servers, and the useful tiers cost a subscription. Index is free, has no account, and keeps your data in your own Chrome profile, where Chrome sync carries it between your computers the way it carries your bookmarks. Chrome's own tab groups are the building block Index is made of: it turns them into groups that remember, close and reopen on their own, and belong to a space.

The way to use it: stop keeping track of tabs and bookmarks, and keep everything in spaces and groups instead. Open a group when you need it and turn it off when you are done; its links wait for next time. Keep every tab: the ones out of sight go to sleep, so Chrome stays fast. Turn on Chrome's vertical tabs and collapse the tab strip, and Chrome's own interface falls away: the side panel becomes the browser, as focused as Arc's sidebar, with Chrome underneath.

Index runs per Chrome profile. Install it in each profile you use and every one gets its own spaces, favorites and sync, with Chrome's own separation of cookies, passwords and extensions around it: work and personal kept fully apart, the way Arc's profiles do, and switchable the way Chrome's profiles already are.

## Words

- A **space** holds groups (earlier versions called it a workspace).
- A **group** holds links, and opens as a Chrome tab group (earlier versions called it a project).
- A **link** is a page a group remembers (earlier versions called it a saved tab). A **tab** is an open Chrome tab.

## How it works

- A **space** is a part of your life: work, home, a side project. It holds groups. A Chrome window shows one space at a time. Switching spaces puts one set of tab groups away and brings another back.
- A **group** is a tab group that remembers: a set of saved links, with a name and a color. Turned on, it is a Chrome tab group in the window, named and colored like the group, with a tab for each saved link. Turned off, the tab group is put away and the links stay saved.
- **Hot swapping.** Switching in Index is a hot swap, whether you switch a group or a whole space. Turn a group off, or switch to another space, and the tabs leave the tab strip, but they don't close: Index moves them, still loaded, into a hidden window you never see. Turn the group on, or switch back, and they are in the strip again as you left them, every one, with the page, the scroll position and anything half-typed intact. Nothing reloads, nothing signs in again, nothing waits on the network. It's the difference between putting work down and tearing it down. Tabs left out of sight a long while go to sleep (see Sleeping tabs below).
- The links you save in a group are the part that lasts: the pages it always starts from, synced to your other computers, there even when the tabs are gone.
- A group's tab group can hold tabs that are not saved in the group. A tab you open while working in a group lands in its tab group, but it is not saved until you ask. The panel shows three kinds of row in a group: saved links whose tab is open, saved links whose tab is closed, and open tabs that are not saved yet. Save tab turns one of those into a saved link.
- **Nothing done in Chrome changes what is saved.** Closing a tab leaves its link, shown as closed. Browsing a tab to another page leaves the link as it was; the row shows ↩ to say the tab has moved on, and offers Go back and Save current page. Where the tab got to is noted on that computer, so a link whose tab has closed opens again where you left it, until Go back; the closed row carries a small mark to say so. Dragging tabs or tab groups, pinning, renaming or recoloring a tab group change nothing saved. What is saved changes only through Index's own actions, an import, a Rewind restore, or changes synced from another computer.
- **Favorites** are up to eight pages you want in every space: mail, calendar, chat. They sit in a strip at the top of the panel, whatever space is showing. A favorite opens as a Chrome pinned tab. If its tab is already open in another window, a click brings it over rather than opening a second one. The tab is pinned because it is a favorite, so Index looks after the pin: Close tab closes it in this window and the favorite stays; Delete closes it in every window; Remove from favorites unpins it everywhere and leaves it open among the window's other tabs.
- **Other tabs** lists the window's tabs that are in no group: plain tabs, pinned tabs that are not favorites, and Chrome's own tab groups. They are shown, never saved. Any of them can be moved into a group, and a group can be made from a Chrome tab group in a click.
- After a restart, Index recognizes a restored window's space by the names of its tab groups and picks up where it was.

## The side panel

The main interface, opened from the toolbar icon or its shortcut. It opens with the cursor in its search field. It shows the favorites strip, the spaces, the current space's groups with their links, and Other tabs. Actions, from each thing's menu (its … button, or a right-click on it) and by drag and drop:

- Spaces: new, rename, delete, reorder; switch the window to one; bring a space that is open in another window here, or go to its window; sleep its tabs; clear its unsaved tabs; add from bookmarks. The space's menu is a right-click on its name in the search field.
- Groups: new (ticking the tabs it should start with), rename, recolor, delete, reorder, turn on or off, move to another space, move the current tab here, add from bookmarks, clear its unsaved tabs, sleep its tabs.
- Links: open, rename (an empty name hands the title back to the page), move to favorites, move out of the group, delete, sleep its tab, close its tab, go back or save current page after the tab moves on.
- Favorites: add from any tab or link; rename; move into a group; reorder; close its tab; sleep its tab; remove, which unpins its tabs and leaves them open, or drag the tile down among Other tabs for the same; delete, which closes its tabs; go back or save current page after its tab moves on.
- Other tabs: sleep its tabs; save them as a group; close all.
- The … menu: Rewind and Sleeping tabs; Add from bookmarks, Import and Export; Themes and Change keyboard shortcut; and at its foot, a gauge of how much synced storage is used.
- A new install opens a welcome page in three steps: what the sidebar is, what each part of it is, and search. Its last button starts Index.
- A space with no groups offers the window's tab groups as groups and its pinned tabs as favorites, as ways to start.

## Search

- **Search** reaches anything in a few letters: any group, space, link or open tab, and any action. It is at the top of the panel, and it opens over any web page with Ctrl+Shift+P (Mac: Command+Shift+P). Before anything is typed it lists the spaces and the actions, each with a key. Names match on scattered letters in order; addresses need the letters together. The actions start with what can be done where you are: this window's space, the current tab's group, and the tab itself. Everything the panel can do is here too, including New group (g), New space (w), New tab outside groups (o), Themes (t), Rewind (r), Sleeping tabs (s), Sleep space, Sleep hidden tabs, Export (x), Import (i) and Add from bookmarks (b).
- Over a page, search is Index's own page in a frame. It reads nothing from the page and is removed when it closes.
- **New tab outside groups** (Alt+T) opens a tab that joins no group.

## The tab switcher

Index moves tabs out of sight all the time: a group you turn off, a space you switch away from. That would be a problem if the tab you were on a moment ago went out of sight with them. The tab switcher is why it doesn't.

- Alt+Q shows a row over the page, like Alt-Tab or Command-Tab: the tabs you were on most recently, newest first, each as its site's icon. The row is drawn from every window, every space and every group, including the ones that are hidden right now.
- A tap goes back to the tab you left and another tap comes back. With Alt held, pressing again steps right, with Shift steps left, and letting go of Alt goes to the chosen tab. Arrows, Enter, Escape and clicks work too.
- Going to a tab brings back whatever it needs: if its space is hidden, that space comes to this window; if its group is turned off, the group is turned on; if it was a saved link whose tab has closed, the link is opened again. The tab you were on a moment ago is always one tap away, whatever Index has done with it since.

## Sleeping tabs

Keep every tab, and Chrome stays fast.

- A sleeping tab is one Chrome has unloaded: the tab stays where it is, in its group, with its title and icon, and loads again the moment you click it. Nothing is closed, and the link stays saved.
- **Auto sleep:** hidden tabs, in a space that is not on screen or a group turned off, go to sleep after a delay, an hour by default, changeable in hours or days. Only time you are at the computer counts, so nothing goes to sleep over lunch or overnight. The tabs you used most recently stay awake (thirty by default, your choice from none to a hundred), and so do tabs playing sound. The space on screen is never touched.
- **By hand:** Sleep tab in a link's or favorite's menu, Sleep tabs in a group's, the space's or Other tabs', and from search, Sleep hidden tabs. If the tab in front is going to sleep, Index steps back to the tab before it first.
- In the panel, a sleeping row wears a small moon.
- **The Sleeping Tabs page**, opened from the … menu or from search (s): the switch for auto sleep, its delay and how many recent tabs stay awake; four blocks for now, the last 24 hours, 7 days and 28 days, counting tabs asleep, put to sleep and woken; Soon, the hidden tabs about to go to sleep, each with its countdown; Asleep, the tabs asleep, with who put each to sleep (you, or Index) and when; and the count since Index was installed.

## Keyboard shortcuts

Defaults, changeable at chrome://extensions/shortcuts (also reached from the … menu):

- Search: Ctrl+Shift+P (Mac: Command+Shift+P)
- Show or hide the side panel: Ctrl+Shift+O (Mac: Command+Shift+O)
- Open a new tab outside groups: Alt+T
- The tab switcher: Alt+Q

## Existing tab groups and bookmarks

Index makes it easy to turn what you already have into groups and spaces:

- **Tab groups:** each of the window's Chrome tab groups is listed under Other tabs and becomes a group when asked. A space with no groups offers all of them at once.
- **Pinned tabs:** offered as favorites.
- **Bookmarks:** Add from bookmarks (in the … menu, the space's or a group's) shows your bookmark folders. A folder becomes a group; a folder of folders becomes a space; bookmarks can be ticked into an existing group. Chrome asks for the bookmarks permission the first time. Index only reads bookmarks: it never creates, moves or deletes one.
- **Let an AI set it up:** hand ChatGPT or Claude your bookmarks or browsing history and ask for an Index import file. The format is documented at https://www.mhb.software/idx/import-format/ and as a JSON Schema at https://www.mhb.software/idx/import.schema.json, so the AI needs no example file.

## Import, export and backup

- Export (in the … menu) writes one JSON file: the spaces, their groups, each group's links, and the favorites. It is your backup, and the way to carry everything to another profile or computer. It is plain JSON, so it is also the way to edit everything in bulk, by hand, with a script, or with an AI.
- The file is version 2: `spaces`, each with `groups`, each with `links`. Files from earlier versions, which say `workspaces`, `projects` and `tabs`, still import.
- Import reads the same file, in two modes. **Add to what's here** adds every space and group in the file as new. **Replace everything** makes the file the whole truth: anything not in it is deleted, and a group whose id matches is updated in place, keeping its tab group.
- Importing never turns a group on. Open tab groups are left as they are.
- Full reference: https://www.mhb.software/idx/import-format/

## Themes

- Hundreds of color schemes, from the same collection terminals use: Catppuccin, Dracula, Nord, Gruvbox, Solarized, TokyoNight, Atom One Dark and many more. A theme colors every Index page: the panel, search, the Rewind page and the Sleeping Tabs page.
- The theme page is a searchable grid, each tile drawn in its own colors; tapping one puts it on at once, with Undo. Auto follows the system's light or dark setting.

## Rewind

- Off until turned on. On, Index keeps a record of changes to your spaces and groups on this computer: names, colors, the titles and addresses of links, including ones since removed. Nothing is recorded while it is off, and turning it off deletes the record.
- The record keeps a week of changes by default, or from ten minutes to a month, your choice. Older changes are dropped.
- The Rewind page shows the record as a timeline to scrub through, with the state at the chosen moment drawn under it the way the panel draws it. From any moment it can put back a group, a space or everything as it was then, and a restore can be undone. Before a big restore, the page shows what would change beside what there is now, to look over first.
- The record can also be copied to a folder of your choosing (iCloud Drive, say), kept up to date as it changes, and a folder's record can be read on the page, so another computer's record can be looked at.
- The record is never synced. Clearing it, or turning Rewind off, deletes it and the files this computer wrote to the folder.

## Privacy and storage

- Index collects nothing: no account, no server, no analytics, no network requests, no remote code. Nobody, its author included, receives anything from it. Nothing is read from the pages you visit.
- Spaces, groups, their links, the favorites and the theme are kept in Chrome's synced extension storage, so with Chrome sync on they follow you between your own computers through your Google account, the way bookmarks do. Changes made on another computer arrive while Index runs.
- That storage holds about 100 KB in total: several hundred links across all groups. The … menu shows how much is used, and Index says so when it is full. Favorites must fit in one item of that storage, about 6 KB.
- Per-computer state, such as which groups are open in which window and where each link's tab has got to, and Rewind's record stay on that computer.
- Sleep asks Chrome whether you are at the computer, to count the delay, and keeps nothing of the answer. It keeps a count of the tabs it put to sleep and woke, by hour, for 28 days, and a total since install: no titles or addresses, on that computer only.
- Site icons come from the copies Chrome already has.
- Permissions: tabs, tabGroups, storage, sidePanel, scripting, activeTab, favicon, alarms, idle, and bookmarks (optional, asked for only when Add from bookmarks is chosen). No host permissions.
- To delete your data, delete your spaces in Index; removing the extension removes what it stored on that computer. Export writes everything to a file that goes nowhere unless you send it.
- Full policy: https://www.mhb.software/idx/privacy/

## Pages

- [The guide](https://www.mhb.software/idx/guide/): Index's features and how they work
- [Index](https://www.mhb.software/idx/): the landing page
- [Import and export format](https://www.mhb.software/idx/import-format/): the JSON file Export writes and Import reads, for editing by hand, by script or with an AI
- [JSON Schema](https://www.mhb.software/idx/import.schema.json): the same, machine-readable
- [Privacy policy](https://www.mhb.software/idx/privacy/): what Index stores and where
- [Chrome Web Store](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/index-workspaces-for-chro/akfmfjkbpjklpegnfagojchhlapfkpkb): install it