The tab tree

Side View lists every window as a card. Inside each card are its tabs, in the same order as the browser's tab strip. Tabs opened from a web page are indented under that page, so you can see where each page came from.

Nesting

What the indent means

The └ line in front of a tab means: this tab was opened from the page above it.

• These are nested:
  • Clicking a link on a page that opens in a new tab.
  • Middle-clicking or Ctrl-clicking a link.
  • A page opening a new tab by itself.
  • Right-click a link → Open link in new tab.
• These are not nested: new tabs you open yourself.
  • Ctrl+T or the + button on the tab strip.
  • Typing an address, picking a bookmark or a history entry in that tab afterwards does not nest it either.
  • Tabs opened from the history page or the new tab page are not nested.
• Once a tab is nested, it stays that way. Opening or switching other tabs does not make the indent appear or disappear.
• Hover the line to see Opened from “…”, with the title of the tab it came from.
• Deeper chains show deeper indents. The guide line starts right under the parent tab's icon.
• When you close a tab, the tabs under it move one level out.

Indent by hand

1. Hover the tab's icon (favicon). Two small arrows appear in its place.
2. Click › to indent the tab under the tab above it.
3. Click ‹ to move it one level out.

Your manual changes win over the rules above and last for the current browser session.

The nesting is not kept after you restart the browser or restore a saved session. Tabs come back in the right order, but flat.

Markers on the left of a tab

Each tab row has one slot on its left edge. When several things are true at once, the most important one is shown.

Marker	Meaning
Red paw	You pinned this tab to SessionPaw's Pin Tabs list. Click the slot to pin or unpin.
Red music note	The tab is playing sound. It bounces if it is also the tab you are on.
Green paw, bouncing	The tab you are on right now.
Grey paw	One of your recent tabs.
Faint grey paw on hover	Nothing else is shown here. Click to pin the tab.

Hover the slot to see a short summary: pinned or not, playing sound, in Recent Tabs, current tab.

Markers on the right of a tab

Marker	Meaning
Colored DUP	Duplicate. Another open tab has the same address. Each set of duplicates gets its own color. Hover a duplicate and the titles of all its copies shimmer.
Green leaf	The tab is hibernated. It is not using memory. Click the tab to wake it up.
G / UG (on hover)	Put this tab in a new tab group (G), or take it out of its group (UG).
Red × (on hover)	Close the tab.

Addresses that differ only after a # count as the same page when looking for duplicates.

Quick List

The box at the top of Side View is the Quick List. It is not a real window. It collects tabs from all windows. Four icons on its title switch what it shows:

Icon	List
Clock	Recent Tabs: the tabs you used most recently. The newest is at the bottom.
Paw	Pin Tabs: tabs you pinned with the red paw.
Pin	Browser Pin Tabs: tabs pinned in the browser's own tab strip.
Note	Playing Tabs: tabs that are playing sound.

The small number on each icon is how many tabs are in that list.

• Click the slanted pin at the left of the Quick List title to keep it fixed at the top while the window list scrolls.
• Set how many rows it shows (0 to 7) in Settings → Quick List length. 0 hides it.
• Short on space? Turn off Quick List in the gear menu at the bottom of Side View, or Settings → Show Quick List. Your row count is kept for when you turn it back on.

Duplicates

To clean up duplicates:

1. Look for the colored DUP label on the right of tab rows.
2. Hover one. The other copies shimmer, so you can find them.
3. Close the copies you don't need with the red ×.

Window colors and names

• Name: click the window title and type. A window without a name shows its first tab's title in grey as a hint.
• Name from the page: select some text on a web page, right-click, and choose SessionPaw → Name window with "…".
• Color: right-click the window title and click one of the three dots: blue, green or amber.
• Incognito windows are always dark and show an eye-off icon.

More in Windows.

Tab groups

SessionPaw shows browser tab groups as their own cards inside the window, linked by an orange frame.

• Group a single tab: hover the tab and click G. Click UG to ungroup it.
• Group a whole window: hover the window title and click G. All tabs that are not already in a group become one new group. If the window has a name, the group gets the same name. Existing groups are left as they are.
• Ungroup a whole window: hover the window title and click UG, or right-click G.
• Rename a group: click the group card's title and type.
• Move a tab into a group: drag it onto a tab inside the group.
• Move a group to its own window: right-click the group card and choose Move to new window.
• Split linked cards into two windows: click the orange link icon between two cards.

Moving tabs and windows

• Drag a tab onto another tab to place it before or after that tab. This works across windows.
• Drag a tab onto a window's title to move it to the end of that window.
• Drag a window above or below another window to change the order of the list. This only changes SessionPaw's list, not the windows on your screen.
• Split a window: hover the gap between two tabs and click the scissors. That tab and the tabs below it move to a new window.

You cannot drag tabs between a normal window and an incognito window. The browser does not allow it.

Tab right-click menu

Item	What it does
Read later	Saves the tab to your Read Later folder. See Read later and the dustbin.
Move to new window	Moves the tab into a new window of its own.
Open in popup window	Moves the tab into a small window without a tab strip.
Move to normal window	(For tabs already in a popup window.) Moves it back.
Open in private window	Opens the same address in an incognito window.
Hibernate	Frees the tab's memory.
Close other tabs	Closes the other tabs in this window.
Close tabs above / Close tabs below	Closes the tabs above or below this one.
Copy title / Copy URL / Copy title and URL	Copies to the clipboard.

Close other tabs respects tab groups: on a grouped tab it closes the other tabs in that group, and on an ungrouped tab it closes the other ungrouped tabs. Close tabs above and Close tabs below close every tab in that direction, grouped or not.