v4
March 13, 2024
Brand new codebase
Section titled “Brand new codebase”Session Buddy v4 is a complete application rewrite focused on replacing outdated technologies, ensuring continued browser compliance, and providing a robust foundation for the build-out of new features.
In addition to this foundational focus, this release ships with new features and hundreds of enhancements and bug fixes.
Session Buddy v4 is the product of considerable time and effort. If it proves to be valuable to you, please consider a donation to support ongoing development and maintenance. Your contribution, regardless of amount, makes a huge difference.
New naming conventions
Section titled “New naming conventions”Some changes have been made to what we are calling things to better reflect new functionality.
The “Current Session”, which displays a live view of open tabs, is now known as “This Browser”. This will distinguish it from other browser sessions when the ability to add multiple browsers is introduced.
A “Saved Session”, which is created by saving open tabs, is now known as a “Collection”. When tabs are saved, windows are saved as “Folders” and tabs become “Links”.
“Previous Sessions” have been replaced by a new History feature. More on that below.
Features
Section titled “Features”🕰️ History
Section titled “🕰️ History”History allows you to view changes to open tabs over time and restore your windows and tabs exactly as they were at a particular point in the past.
History settings provide control over how often Session Buddy checks for changes and how far back history is kept.
A snapshot of open tabs is always created whenever the browser shuts down, either normally or unexpectedly, so you can quickly resume your work or recover your session after a crash.
👈 Selectable items
Section titled “👈 Selectable items”Windows, tabs, folders, and links can now be selected.
Selectability allows for more precise actions like saving just a portion of a session or opening specific links from a collection.
Multiple items can be selected by checkbox or by holding down Control on Windows or Command on Mac when clicking an item title. Holding Shift when clicking selects a range of items.
🐇🐇 Copy and paste
Section titled “🐇🐇 Copy and paste”Selected tabs or links can be copied and pasted into other collections. You can even paste copied links into This Browser to open them.
When pasted into a document, spreadsheet, or email, copied tabs or links will paste as clickable links. In other applications like text editors, they will paste as plain URLs.
Alternative copy/paste formats can be enabled in settings if the default formats don’t suit your needs. Available formats include Title & URL, Markdown, CSV, JSON, and HTML.
🕵️ Proper search
Section titled “🕵️ Proper search”Search now provides individual results instead of acting as a filter.
Each search result matches either a collection, folder, or link. Clicking on a result loads the associated collection and selects the matched folder or link.
Search results are ordered based on relevance and the type of thing matched.
📌 Pinned collections
Section titled “📌 Pinned collections”Frequently-used collections can now be pinned to the top of the navigation sidebar for quick access.
As a softer alternative to pinning, a collection can simply be “moved to top” for easy access in the short term.
🔗 Editable links
Section titled “🔗 Editable links”Link titles, URLs, and pinned states can now be edited.
👯 Finding duplicates
Section titled “👯 Finding duplicates”A new action is now available that selects duplicate tabs or links. Once selected, you can close them, delete them, or move them to another collection.
🙈 More tab ignore options
Section titled “🙈 More tab ignore options”In addition to ignoring Session Buddy and browser feature tabs, you can now also ignore new or pinned tabs.
As a reminder, ignored tabs are never displayed or saved by Session Buddy.
🌙 Dark theme
Section titled “🌙 Dark theme”You now have a choice between light and dark themes.
Session Buddy automatically applies the theme to match your OS. This default can be overridden to use your preferred theme.
🚀 Tab open optimizations
Section titled “🚀 Tab open optimizations”As a precaution, Session Buddy will now prompt to proceed when asked to open a lot of tabs.
Session Buddy also automatically optimizes the opening of many tabs by spacing out each open action and suspending some of these tabs until they’re selected. This speeds things up and minimizes memory usage.
🚚 Export to anywhere
Section titled “🚚 Export to anywhere”Export now allows you to select a destination for the export file. Previously, export would just deposit the file in the Downloads folder.
🍄 Enhancements
Section titled “🍄 Enhancements”Faster app load
Section titled “Faster app load”Collection tiles now load as you scroll, significantly speeding up the initial load of Session Buddy when lots of collections exist.
More menus
Section titled “More menus”Right-click menus have been added for navigation tiles, tabs, and links, putting relevant actions within easy reach.
Confirmations
Section titled “Confirmations”Confirmation dialogs have been added for important operations. These confirmations can be individually silenced.
UI responsiveness
Section titled “UI responsiveness”UI responsiveness has been improved. The width of the navigation sidebar, for example, now dynamically adapts to the browser window’s width.
Action modifiers
Section titled “Action modifiers”Some actions include support for key modifiers that slightly alter their behavior.
For example, holding down Control on Windows or Command on Mac when opening links opens them in the current window. Holding down Shift instead opens them in a new window.
Favicon fallbacks
Section titled “Favicon fallbacks”Link favicons may become outdated over time, leading to broken icon images in older Collections. Session Buddy tries to account for this with a multi-stage fallback strategy, looking in standard locations for a valid favicon before defaulting to a placeholder icon.
Session Buddy also provides favicons for links that do not normally have them, such as browser feature pages or local image and PDF files.
New logo
Section titled “New logo”The original Session Buddy logo was based on a design language used by Chrome that has long been retired. It was time for a refresh.
🐞 Bug fixes
Section titled “🐞 Bug fixes”Prevent browser lockup when importing large files
Section titled “Prevent browser lockup when importing large files”Attempts to import a large file used to cause the browser to hang or take a very long time to complete. This is no longer the case.
Handle extension permissions when opening tabs
Section titled “Handle extension permissions when opening tabs”When incognito or local file links cannot be opened because of extension permissions that have not yet been opted into, Session Buddy now displays a notification about the failed links.
Additionally, these types of disallowed links no longer prevent other links from opening.
Maintain consistent pinned states
Section titled “Maintain consistent pinned states”Some collection operations like sorting could previously cause pinned links to end up in invalid positions. This has been fixed.
Preserve ID when combining collections
Section titled “Preserve ID when combining collections”Previously, when combining collections the combined collection would receive a new ID. This was not ideal when the motivation for combining was to append links to a particular collection. The ID of the appending collection is now preserved.
Prevent menu from spontaneously closing
Section titled “Prevent menu from spontaneously closing”The menu for a window would sometimes close immediately after opening, making it difficult to click on an action. This is now fixed.
And much more…
Section titled “And much more…”Hundreds of finer-grained bugs and quirks have been addressed.
🔧 Under the hood
Section titled “🔧 Under the hood”Foundation for cloud storage
Section titled “Foundation for cloud storage”Session Buddy v4 was architected from the ground up with a focus on storage flexibility and an emphasis on cloud storage support in particular.
Foundation for tab group support
Section titled “Foundation for tab group support”The underlying changes required to view and edit Chrome tab groups are included in this release.
Support for other browsers
Section titled “Support for other browsers”A lot of thought went into simplifying the process of building and maintaining separate versions of Session Buddy for publication to individual marketplaces and official use in Edge, Firefox, and other browsers.
Internationalization
Section titled “Internationalization”Support for different languages has been added. All that’s needed are translations for specific locales.
Manifest v3 compliance
Section titled “Manifest v3 compliance”Session Buddy v4 fully complies with Google’s new security and performance standards for browser extensions established by the Manifest v3 specification.
Web SQL Database deprecation
Section titled “Web SQL Database deprecation”Session Buddy v4 now uses IndexedDB to store data locally. This replaces the use of Web SQL Database, an older storage mechanism being deprecated in Chrome due in part to security and reliability concerns.