The Home Tab

One "home" tab to jump to—plus a shortcut to snap back where you were.

I keep a lot of tabs open. On calls I keep jumping back to the same tab—the deck, the doc, the dashboard—and with a dozen tabs from the same site they all look identical. Pinning helps until I forget what's pinned where.

Home Tab is a small Chrome extension that remembers one tab as your home. Click the icon (or use a keyboard shortcut) to jump there. If you closed it, it can open again to the URL you saved. There's also a shortcut to bounce back to the tab you were just on.

Features

  • Set a home tab — Mark whatever tab you're on as "home" from the toolbar or a shortcut.
  • Jump home — Instantly focus your home tab from anywhere in the window.
  • Back to recent — Return to the tab you came from after jumping home.
  • Keyboard shortcuts (defaults; change them in chrome://extensions/shortcuts):
  • Open Home TabAlt+Shift+H (Windows/Linux), Ctrl+Shift+H (Mac — Control, not Command)
  • Back to Most Recent TabAlt+Shift+B / Ctrl+Shift+B
  • Set current tab as Home TabAlt+Shift+S / Ctrl+Shift+S
  • Options page — Tweak behavior from the extension's options (opens in a tab).

How to use it

  1. Install from the Chrome Web Store using the button above.
  2. Open the tab you want as "home" and use Set current tab as Home Tab (extension menu or shortcut).
  3. Whenever you're lost in the tab bar, trigger Open Home Tab.
  4. Use Back to Most Recent when you want to return to where you were before the jump.

Source for the extension lives in this repo under apps/chrome_extensions/home_tab/ if you want to audit or fork it.