A Chrome extension that brings Cover Flow to your browser tabs — navigate all your open tabs in a beautiful 3D carousel, keyboard-first.
- Cover Flow carousel — tabs arranged in a 3D perspective view, just like the original iTunes/iPhone Cover Flow
- Tab groups — Chrome tab groups appear as a single card with floating favicons; drill into a group with
↓and return with↑ - Keyboard-first — navigate entirely without the mouse using arrow keys, Enter, Escape, and
/for search - Drag to close — drag any card out of the row to close that tab with a satisfying poof animation
- Undo close — accidentally closed a tab? Press
⌘Z(or click the toast) to restore it instantly - Search / filter — press
/and type to filter tabs by title or domain; search is scoped to the current group when inside one - Full-page view — opens as a new tab for maximum space, not a tiny popup
- Favicon-first cards — uses each site's favicon as the card hero with automatic fallback to the Google favicon service
- Always centred — opens with your currently active tab in the centre of the carousel
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
⌘⇧. / Ctrl+Shift+. |
Open TabFlow (global shortcut) |
← / → |
Navigate carousel |
↓ |
Enter a tab group |
↑ |
Exit a tab group back to main view |
↵ Enter |
Open the selected tab (or enter a group) |
Esc |
Close the active tab |
/ |
Focus search |
⌘Z / Ctrl+Z |
Undo last closed tab |
Customise the shortcut:
chrome://extensions/shortcuts— Chrome lets you remap it to anything you prefer.
TabFlow is not yet published to the Chrome Web Store. Install it as an unpacked extension:
- Clone or download this repository
- Open Chrome and go to
chrome://extensions - Enable Developer mode (toggle in the top-right corner)
- Click Load unpacked
- Select the
tab-flowfolder
The TabFlow icon will appear in your toolbar. Click it to open the carousel.
First launch: Chrome will ask you to approve the permissions
tabs,windows,sessions, andtabGroups. These are the minimum required to read, switch, close, and restore tabs.
The icons need to be generated once before the extension works:
- Open
icons/generate.htmlin any browser (drag the file into a tab) - Click Download All Icons
- Move the three downloaded PNGs (
icon16.png,icon48.png,icon128.png) into theicons/folder
tab-flow/
├── manifest.json Chrome Extension Manifest V3
├── background.js Service worker — handles toolbar icon click
├── newtab.html Full-page UI (primary interface)
├── newtab.css All styles
├── models.js Pure data model layer — minimal Chrome API (self-URL)
├── newtab.js All UI logic — Cover Flow, tab groups, search, drag
└── icons/
├── generate.html Open in browser to generate PNG icons
├── icon16.png
├── icon48.png
└── icon128.png
| Permission | Why it's needed |
|---|---|
tabs |
Read tab titles, URLs, favicons; switch and close tabs |
windows |
Focus the correct window when switching to a tab |
sessions |
Restore the most recently closed tab (undo) |
tabGroups |
Read Chrome tab group names and colors |
No build step — it's plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Edit any file and click Reload on the extension card in chrome://extensions.
MIT — see LICENSE.