Moving from Session Buddy, OneTab or Tabs Outliner
SessionPaw's Import button only reads files exported by SessionPaw itself. It can't read another extension's export file directly. You can still bring everything over: the trick is to open your old tabs as windows once, and let SessionPaw save them.
Before you start
- Install SessionPaw and open Side View.
- Set Settings → Opening many tabs → Hold unloaded. Big sessions will then open without loading every page.
- Keep your old extension installed until you've checked that everything arrived.
Method 1: restore, then save (works for any tool)
Repeat for each saved session, group or tree in your old tool:
- Restore it with the old tool, so it opens as one or more browser windows.
- In Side View, name the new windows.
- Right-click a window title → Save and close window. Or, if only those windows are open, green power button → Save & Close All.
- In Session Manager, rename the session and give it a tag such as
imported.
Work in batches of a few sessions at a time. It's also a good moment to drop what you no longer need.
Method 2: through bookmarks
Many tab tools can export to bookmarks or to an HTML bookmark file, which your browser can import.
- Get the old tabs into a bookmark folder.
- In Side View, round button → Bookmark List, find the folder, and click Open in new window.
- Save the window as above.
For a lot of folders, you can also build Cloud sessions by hand. Inside the SessionPaw CloudSession Saved bookmark folder, a folder that contains window folders, each with bookmarks, shows up as a Cloud session in Session Manager.
Where your favorite features live
| If you used… | In SessionPaw |
|---|---|
| A saved session list | Session Manager |
| "Send all tabs" to a list, then close them | Green power button → Save & Close All |
| Restore a saved group | Session Manager → open button |
| A tree of tabs and windows | Side View |
| Notes and separators inside the tree | Concept Mode notes and concepts, next to the live list |
| Crash recovery | Auto Saved |
| Sync between computers | Cloud sessions through bookmark sync |
| Export to a file | Session Manager → Export |
What works differently
- The tree is live. Side View shows the windows that are open now. Closed windows don't stay in the tree. They go into sessions instead.
- Nesting resets on restart. Tabs come back in order, but not nested.
- Side View is a separate window, docked beside your browser windows, not a panel inside one. For a panel inside the browser, press
Ctrl+G. - Auto Saved needs Side View open. Keep it open while you work.