Source
r/firefox•
SerialTimeKiller

Are there really no session manager add-ons that can save tab history?

Help

I'm just now trying to move over to Quantum Firefox after hanging on to pre-Quantum Firefox and other pre-Quantum forks as long as possible. Mainly, that's because I liked all my add-ons, especially Michael Kraft's Session Manager. It's saved me quite a few times with its automatic backup sessions. When I reach a large number of tabs, and Firefox is slowing down, I can just use Session Manager to save the entire session in one go. If I ever need to go back and find something, I can go searching through those sessions, and I can even go through the history of each tab to see how I got to a page. It's very useful, and that add-on works very well.

In doing a lot of research on Quantum Firefox and its WebExtensions offerings, it seems that every single session/tab manager add-on only saves the tabs that were open when the session was saved. All tab history is lost. Add-on authors and various posts seem to indicate that Mozilla just doesn't provide the API for add-on authors to implement tab history.

However, Quantum Firefox's own session restore feature DOES save tab history. This is clear when you open the browser, and it restores the previous session with everything intact, even the closed tabs list. Furthermore, I found a website that can interpret the .jsonlz4 files (such as previous.jsonlz4 or recovery.jsonlz4) found in the C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles********.default\sessionstore-backups folder that seem to be created as part of Firefox's session backup process. It can extract all the data including the history of each tab and the closed tabs list from one of those files. Here's the website:https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html

Add-on authors and and general consensus seems to be that tab history is not possible as Firefox currently stands. And that would require more careful thinking and browsing on my part as I go along knowing that only my top tabs will ever be saved if I want to save a session. When I found this .jsonlz4 scrounger website, though, I wondered if maybe I had missed something. I suppose I could periodically go and take those files, run them through that website, and save the results somewhere. But it's kind of a pain when Michael Kraft's add-on did it simply and flawlessly before Quantum.

So, is there anything out there that does what I'm looking for in terms of saving tab history that I just haven't found yet? Or I am just going to have to revamp my browsing habits to accommodate this reduced functionality? I just need an answer, so I can stop being stuck in limbo. Thank you.

Posted May 27, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

168
nextbern:nightly: | :fenixNightly: | 🐧 | :android:•

Have you tried https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/fxwvyn/simple_tab_groups_an_extension_thats_so_good_it/

I think it just hides tabs instead of trying to save sessions, so it should retain tab history.

4
SerialTimeKillerOP•

Thanks. That seems like a fairly simple interface. I played around around with tab groups years ago with Firefox, and it didn't suit me so well, but it may be worth looking at it again since I'm trying to recreate functionality here in a different way. It's not quite what I'm looking for, but I'll dabble with it and Panorama (thanks for the suggestion, @daktyl198) on another computer that I've been testing Quantum add-ons on.

I think for now, though, what I'm going to do is use Tab Session Manager. I've tested it out, and while it doesn't save tab history (or claim to), it's got the biggest user base and works on multiple browsers. Support and popularity wins.

Probably 80% of my tabs have no history. So if I save a session of my top tabs, then quickly close all those, I can go through the other tabs, see what I want to save, open those links in new tabs, do another session save, and I'm done. I'll rely on Firefox's in-built session restore for restoring crashes. And the combination of Multiple Tab Handler and Copy Selected Tabs to Clipboard is also another quick backup option. And the site I linked in my original post. Yay redundancy while I try to figure out a new workstyle.

I know this seems kind of obsessive, but I basically use my tabs as bit of a note taking apparatus and time capsule for how I was thinking about something when I was researching it. And since I tend to barf out large amounts of tabs very quickly, stopping to organize them into groups tends to be a little clunky. But maybe I'll find groups useful again after I've played around for a while. The goal right now is to get to up-to-date FF. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

2
nextbern:nightly: | :fenixNightly: | 🐧 | :android:•

I know this seems kind of obsessive, but I basically use my tabs as bit of a note taking apparatus and time capsule for how I was thinking about something when I was researching it. And since I tend to barf out large amounts of tabs very quickly, stopping to organize them into groups tends to be a little clunky. But maybe I'll find groups useful again after I've played around for a while. The goal right now is to get to up-to-date FF. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

You may want to try https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/worldbrain/

1
Random3838•

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1378651

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1381922

3
Daktyl198:nightly: | :windows: | :arch: | :ubuntu:•

I personally use Panorama Tab Groups which seems to do what you want. It defaults to the old Expose-style interface from the original Firefox tab groups, but you can choose to make it a drop down instead.

Because it simply uses the tab hiding feature to separate tab groups, it actually uses the default Firefox session restore functionality (assuming you mean "Restart where you left off" in settings). I tested it just now by creating a tab with history, closing the browser, opening and making sure that tab stayed unloaded, opening a few more tabs, closing, reopening and selecting the tab. The tab loaded from a cold state with back button functionality that worked.

2
erotavlas_turbo•

You can try Tab Manager Plus.

1
onurtag:firefox: Stable :windows:•

I use Tab Session Manager
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tab-session-manager/

1
much2myamusement•

Have you landed on a solution?

I'm currently using Vivaldi, but only because it includes a session manager that saves tab history.

I'd like to try Quantum, but a boost in quickness doesn't seem worth losing the ability to perfectly preserve the state of my research. Some topics are very complex, and must be revisited occasionally, at which point losing the state of one's research is certainly a time killer.

Do you know of Vivaldi's session manager?

Regardless, if you've done so, I'd love to hear what solution you've settled on for Firefox.

1