Automatic Backup to Disk Directory

[atonn]

Hey, I've been wanting to build a OneTab clone to get my feet wet with Browser Extension building for quite a while now, but of course I never got around to it. And now I stumbled upon yours - love it!

Now, I'm not sure whether Chrome extensions can even have permissions do write to the user's file directories, but since OneTab lost everybody's tabs during some Chrome Update like a year ago, I've been weary of trusting it again, or when using it, manually doing copy-paste backups constantly.

It would be great if there was an option to automatically store a backup list/file of your tabs somewhere on your disk. That way people could also choose to sync their devices via open source tools like nextcloud and syncthing as a bonus.

[greduan]

That could be something to look into.

Off the top of my head, there is no way for this to happen automatically. The browser doesn't have an API to the file system as far as I know.

But, of course it is possible to trigger a download and stuff like this, if the user wants to.

How OneTab was handling it was to push the tabs to their own server, which I'm not interested for several reasons (amongst them, privacy). Self-hosted could be an option but that is work, and again, security. [2019-01-29: Coming back to this, I'm not sure this is how they were doing it. At the time of writing I had the impression they were monetizing it somehow.]

If you have any ideas, let me know. I'd like to put some time in this extension in the near future (next 12 months :sweat_smile:).

[atonn]

Oh, so that's how it is - the download function is a good idea! Reminds me of the Extension "Tabs Export" for Firefox, which I found to be the only working addon for mobile android Firefox (Fennec) to export all my tabs to a txt in the phone's download folder. I use it to dump all my phone tabs to my PC (via syncthing), because I only use my phone to browse or accumulate tabs when outside and not at home :D

So the solution for the trust issues with OneTab (and weird Chrome Updates can happen at any time) might be a "Paranoid Backup" Checkbox, that once enabled, dumps a "tabulator_backup_YYYY-MM-DD-hour-minute-seconds.txt" file into your Download folder EVERY TIME you use one of the "Save Tabs" functions. Sure, most users might hate it and keep it disabled, as it clutters their Download Folder, but I would love it, and I'm sure everyone that got burned in the OneTab fiasco would as well.

I share your thoughts on privacy and syncing on servers, so if there is no way to get to the user's filesystem, this download function seems to be the way to go for me!

For other ideas... there aren't many, I think the beauty of this type of extension is in its simplicity. Too many settings just clutter it up.

• of course an export (copy/paste) function would be nice, but the download-to-txt function can also fill that role.

• Just one click: We're all lazy, and I think the main reason why many people ended up using OneTab over all the other tab managers is that's it's really just one single click to do once you're overwhelmed by your horrible browsing habits. Right now, using Tabulator consists of 2 clicks (choosing a save option from the context menu). If I look at addons like the great suspender, it seems possible to add context menu items to the right click function instead. I think it would be nice if you could set a default saving operation for the single left click in a drop-down menu in the settings, and use a right-click whenever you want something else

• URL preview: while hovering over a saved link/tab, Chrome does not display the URL in the bottom left corner - apparently that only happens for "a href="-link objects, and you used different link objects (most likely for technical limitations that I do not understand). I really like the URL preview though, as most website titles are just uninformative.

• On very long link titles that go over several lines, the additional lines start below the [+] and the favicon, should be nicer if they keep in line with the text. https://imgur.com/a/zII7SUf

I can't think of more that I would want from a perfect open source onetab-alternative. Good stuff!

[greduan]

Noted! Good suggestions :slightly_smiling_face:

When I get back into this I'll look into it! :slightly_smiling_face:

[greduan]

@atonn Do you happen to have an email I can reach you at? Shoot me an email at me@greduan.com.