Tabs Outliner alternative
A maintained Tabs Outliner alternative
Tabs Outliner pioneered tree-style tab management, but its development appears abandoned and it isn't built for Manifest V3. Roost is an actively maintained, MV3-native way to save, search and restore your tabs — privately, for $5 once.
Tabs Outliner's strengths and risks
Tabs Outliner renders your tabs as a tree in a separate window — you can nest, annotate, suspend inactive tabs, and export the tree. Power users built real workflows around it, and it earned a loyal following (100k+ users, a solid rating). The problem in 2026 is maintenance: development appears abandoned and it hasn't moved cleanly to Manifest V3. As Chrome tightens its platform, unmaintained extensions risk breaking — and your saved structure with them.
Why move to Roost
Roost is built from scratch for Manifest V3 and is actively maintained, so it's designed to keep working as Chrome evolves. It saves every open tab as a named session, restores the window layout, removes duplicates, suspends tabs to free estimated RAM, exports to Markdown, and searches your sessions. Everything is local — no account, no servers — and Pro ($5 once) adds full-text search and smart auto-grouping by domain, which covers much of the "find and organize" need that drew people to an outliner.
| Feature | Tabs Outliner | Roost |
|---|---|---|
| Actively maintained | Appears abandoned | Yes |
| Manifest V3 native | No | Yes |
| Save & restore sessions | Yes | Yes |
| Tree / outline view | Yes | No (session list) |
| Duplicate tab removal | No | Yes |
| Search saved tabs | Within tree | By name · full-text (Pro) |
| Auto-grouping by domain | No | Pro |
| Pricing | Free/donation | Free · $5 once |
When to stay on Tabs Outliner
If the hierarchical tree — nesting and annotating dozens of tabs in an outline — is the core of your workflow, no session-list tool fully replaces that, and Roost doesn't try to. But if what you really need is reliable, maintained save-and-restore, Roost is the safer long-term home.
Migrating your tabs
- Install Roost (free) from the Chrome Web Store.
- In Tabs Outliner, open the branch of tabs you want to keep.
- In Roost, click Save tabs to capture them as a named session.
- Use Roost's Markdown export to keep a portable, future-proof copy.
A successor that's actually maintained
MV3-native, private save-and-restore — $5 once.
Add Roost to Chrome — FreeRelated comparisons
Frequently asked questions
Is Tabs Outliner still safe to use?
It still works for many users, but its development appears abandoned and it isn't Manifest V3 native, which creates a risk of breakage as Chrome updates. A maintained MV3 tool like Roost is a safer long-term choice.
Does Roost have a tree/outline view?
No. Roost uses a fast, searchable session list rather than a nested tree. If the outline is essential to you, Tabs Outliner is unique there.
Will Roost keep working as Chrome changes?
Roost is built on Manifest V3 and actively maintained, so it's designed to stay compatible with current and upcoming Chrome versions.
Can I export my tabs from Roost?
Yes — any session exports to Markdown with clickable links, giving you a portable, future-proof backup.