How to organize your tabs by project using Spaces

Most of us live inside one browser, but we use it for many completely unrelated things. In the same session you might be researching a work project, following up on a side project, reading weekend plans, and managing personal admin. These contexts don't belong together — but they pile up in the same tab bar anyway.

The result is a browser that reflects everything at once: current project, last week's reading, that flight you were looking at, and documentation you forgot to close. Context-switching gets expensive when every context is visible all the time.

Detab's Spaces are designed to fix this. Here's how to use them.

The two-level system: Spaces and Collections

Detab organizes your tabs on two levels:

• Spaces are top-level areas — like named workspaces. Think "Work," "Side project," "Personal," or one per client if you do consulting work. You switch between Spaces the way you might switch between browser profiles, but without the login friction.
• Collections are named groups of tabs within a Space. "Sprint planning," "Competitor research," "Q3 reading" — each collection is a curated set of tabs with a name you chose.

The hierarchy is intentional. Spaces give you separation at the project or life-area level. Collections give you granularity within each area. Together, they let you build a tab library that mirrors how you actually work.

Setting up your first Space

1. 1
   Open the Detab sidebar Click the Detab icon in your Chrome toolbar. The sidebar opens over your current page — no new tab needed.
2. 2
   Create a new Space Hit the + next to Spaces and give it a name. Start with something broad: "Work," "Personal," or a client name. You can always add more later.
3. 3
   Add a Collection inside it Think of the current project or topic you're working on. Create a Collection with that name — "Q3 planning," "Side project," "Apartment hunting."
4. 4
   Save your tabs into it Select the tabs you want to save and send them to the collection. They're now in your library — you can close the originals without losing them.

A practical example: freelancer setup

Say you do freelance design work alongside a personal side project and some personal admin. Here's how you might structure it:

• Space: Client A → Collections: "Brand discovery," "Inspiration references," "Feedback round 2"
• Space: Side project → Collections: "Tech stack research," "Landing page copy," "Competitor sites"
• Space: Personal → Collections: "Weekend reading," "Trip planning," "Home stuff"

When you're doing client work, you're in the Client A Space — only that context is visible. When you switch to your side project, you switch Spaces. Nothing bleeds between them.

Switching between Spaces mid-day

Switching Spaces in Detab takes one click in the sidebar. Your Collections for each Space are exactly where you left them — nothing gets mixed up when you switch back.

This is the key habit shift: instead of having all your open tabs visible at once, you open a specific Space when you're working in that context. It's a light form of context management — enough structure to reduce distraction, not so much that it becomes a chore to maintain.

Tips for keeping it working

Name Collections specifically

Vague names like "Stuff" or "Research" turn into black holes. Name a Collection for what it's actually for: "CSS grid notes," "Vendor comparison," "July sprint." You'll be able to find what you need at a glance.

Archive, don't accumulate

When a project wraps up, you don't need to delete the Space — just leave it alone. Detab keeps it archived until you need it. The tabs from your last project stay there if you revisit the client, without cluttering your active workspaces.

One Collection per current task

It's easy to dump everything into a single Collection for a project and let it grow unwieldy. A useful habit: create a new Collection when you're working on a distinct sub-task or phase. "Discovery" and "Design review" are separate enough to warrant separate Collections.

The payoff

A few days into using Spaces, the tab bar stops being an anxiety source. When you're working on something, only those tabs are in view. When you're done for the day, the work tabs are saved and out of sight. When you come back the next morning, they're exactly where you left them.

That's the goal: not fewer tabs, but tabs that only appear when they're relevant to what you're doing right now.