A tab switcher and search panel for Chrome on macOS.
⌃⇥ goes back to the last tab you used. ⌘E finds tabs, bookmarks, history, folders and apps.
🌐 Website ｜ 🚀 Install ｜ 💖 Sponsor ｜ 中文文档
Chrome's ⌃⇥ walks the tab strip in order. TabFlick makes it walk the order you actually used, the way ⌘⇥ works for apps.
- Stable A↔B. Tap ⌃⇥ to go back, tap again to return. While ⌃ is held only a cursor moves; the switch commits on release, so tabs you pass through aren't counted as used.
- Page thumbnails. Recognise tabs by how they look, not by truncated titles.
- Keys, arrows or mouse. ⌃⇧⇥ goes back, arrows move while ⌃ is held, or click a card.
- Per window. Lists only the current window's tabs, each window with its own order. Can be turned off.
- Two layouts. A horizontal strip, or a grid that fits every tab on one screen.
One box for open tabs, recently closed tabs, bookmarks, history, favorite folders and installed apps.
- Tab changes scope. All, Browser tabs, Search, History, Browser bookmarks, Recently closed, Folders, Apps. Pick which ones are in the cycle and their order in Settings.
- Pinyin works. Chinese titles match full pinyin and initials.
- Nothing found? Search the web with the browser's own default engine, or with site search such as GitHub and YouTube (templates are editable).
- From any app. ⌥Space opens the panel outside the browser and searches every connected browser's tabs. With nothing typed it lists recent browser tabs and running apps together, most recent first; Enter goes back to what you were doing before.
- ⌘↩ for actions. Copy the URL, title or a Markdown link, reload, return a pinned tab to its pinned URL, close the tab, delete from history, open a folder with another app or copy its path. The footer shows what Enter will do.
- Built-in commands. Type "lock" to lock the screen; with Amphetamine installed, type "amp" or "end" to start or end a session. The first time you run an Amphetamine command, macOS asks whether TabFlick may control it.
- Learns as you go. Search the same thing again and what you picked last time comes first; the closest match gets its own top row. Word initials (
prfinds Pull Request) and one-letter typos still match. - Duplicate tabs are marked, with an action to close the others.
- ⌘1–⌘9 pick a row, Esc clears the query before closing, ⌘, opens Settings.
- Pins that stick — pinned tabs come back after a restart, on the last page you visited. Typed a different address into one? ⌘W takes it back to its pinned URL (press again and Chrome closes it as usual); the same action is in the menu bar and under ⌘↩. Closing a pinned tab yourself unpins it for good.
- Idle tab cleanup — close tabs unused for 12 h, 24 h or 7 days; pinned, audible and grouped tabs stay. Off by default.
- Menu bar tab list — every tab by window, plus recently closed ones.
- Favorite folders — keep your usual folders in the menu bar and open them in any app.
- Global switcher — ⌃⇥ outside the browser lists every browser's tabs, grouped. Off by default.
- Several browsers and profiles at once — Chrome, Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers; each browser and each profile keeps its own list, recently closed tabs and pins.
- Eight languages — 简体中文, 繁體中文, English, 日本語, 한국어, Español, Français, Deutsch.
- In-app updates — checks GitHub Releases and replaces itself in place.
- Fails open — if the extension isn't connected, ⌃⇥ falls back to Chrome's own switching instead of doing nothing.
Requires macOS 14+ and Chrome (or another Chromium browser) 116+.
- App. Download the DMG for your Mac from Releases (
arm64for Apple Silicon,x86_64for Intel) and drag TabFlick into Applications. If macOS says the developer can't be verified, right-click TabFlick in Applications and choose Open. - Extension. Download TabFlick-Extension.zip, unzip it somewhere permanent, open
chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode and click Load unpacked. Step-by-step guide. - Accessibility. On first launch System Settings opens at Accessibility with TabFlick already in the list; turn it on and the app relaunches. A lit menu bar icon means both halves are connected.
The extension asks for tabs, bookmarks, history, favicons and search. The data only goes to TabFlick on the same Mac over a local WebSocket. After an update, allow any new permissions Chrome asks about and reload the extension.
git clone https://github.com/lifedever/TabFlick.git
cd TabFlick
./scripts/dev-run.sh # run the helper in debug
./scripts/build-app.sh 0.0.0 --install # or build TabFlick.app and install itUse these scripts rather than a bare swift build: they pass the SDK path to the linker. Without it the binary records SDK 14.0 and macOS draws the whole app with the old appearance.
Load extension/ as an unpacked extension (step 2). When running from Terminal, macOS attributes the Accessibility permission to Terminal; quit it completely (⌘Q) after granting.
All of them can be changed in Settings.
Switcher — while a browser is frontmost
| Keys | Result |
|---|---|
| ⌃⇥ | Switch to the previous tab |
| ⌃⇥⇥… | Hold ⌃ and keep tapping to go further back |
| ⌃⇧⇥ | Reverse |
| ⌃ ← → ↑ ↓ | Move while ⌃ is held (↑↓ move by row in the grid) |
| Release ⌃ | Switch |
Search panel
| Keys | Result |
|---|---|
| ⌘E | Open inside the browser; press again to close |
| ⌥Space | Open from any app, across all browsers |
| ⇥ / ⇧⇥ | Change scope |
| ⌘1–⌘9 | Pick a row |
| ⌘↩ | Actions: copy the URL, reload, close the tab, open a folder with another app… |
| ⌘, | Open Settings |
Open from the menu bar icon, the TabFlick icon in the Chrome toolbar, or ⌘, in the search panel. Changes apply immediately.
| Page | What's there |
|---|---|
| General | Language, appearance, open at login, update checks, apps excluded from the global switcher |
| Switcher | Shortcut, per-window scope, layout, global switcher |
| Search panel | On/off, both shortcuts, what "All" shows when empty, Tab order and which modes are in it, site search templates |
| Tabs | Pinned tabs, idle tab lifetime, pin shortcut |
| Folders / Open With | Favorite folders and the apps offered to open them |
| Browsers | Connection and extension version per browser |
┌─────────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────────┐
│ Browser extension (MV3)│ ws:// │ Swift helper │
│ │◄───────►│ │
│ · tabs / bookmarks │ :41573 │ · CGEventTap (keys) │
│ · history / favicons │ │ · NSPanel (panels) │
│ · captureVisibleTab │ │ · MRU state machine │
└─────────────────────────┘ └──────────────────────────┘
- The extension cannot read the keyboard. Since Chrome 33,
chrome.commandsrefuses shortcuts containing Tab, so no extension can bind ⌃⇥. - The helper cannot read the tabs. Tabs, bookmarks, history, thumbnails and switching all go through Chrome's extension APIs.
Thumbnails: captureVisibleTab only captures the visible tab, so TabFlick takes one each time a tab becomes active; they accumulate as you browse. chrome:// pages and the Web Store can't be captured and show the favicon instead.
The log is at ~/Library/Logs/TabFlick/tabflick.log and is truncated on every launch.
- ⌃⇥ does nothing / Chrome switches in strip order. Look for
✅ Extension connectedin the log. If it's missing, the extension isn't reaching the app: check it's enabled inchrome://extensionsand TabFlick is running. TabFlick deliberately passes ⌃⇥ to Chrome while disconnected. - Bookmarks or history don't show up in search. The extension is older than the app. Download the latest extension zip, replace the folder, and reload it.
CGEvent.tapCreate failed. Accessibility permission is missing or stale. Re-grant it and fully quit and reopen TabFlick; macOS only reads it at launch.- Chrome warns about developer-mode extensions. Chrome shows this for every unpacked extension. It doesn't affect TabFlick.
UI strings live next to the code as L10n.t("中文", "English"); other languages are tables generated from scripts/l10n/<lang>.json. Fixes are welcome — edit the JSON, then run python3 scripts/l10n/build.py --strict. Terms and tone are in scripts/l10n/GUIDE.md.
TabFlick is free and open source. If it saves you time, you can sponsor its development 💖