Name it, and it stays
Save this window and give it the project's name. Named windows sit outside the autosave rotation, so the literature review you put away in March is still there in June. Free, with no limit on how many.
Forty sources open.
One project at a time.
Papers, documentation, issues and pull requests arrive faster than anyone reads them, and the tab strip is where they pile up. Latr sorts your research sources as they open, keeps each project as a window you can put away and bring back, and reopens long pages at the line you stopped on.
- No account, ever
- Free, and not a trial
- Nothing leaves your browser
Sorting sources
Group research tabs by topic, automatically
The first thing that goes wrong in technical research is that every page lands in one long strip, in the order you happened to open it. Sorting it by hand is a job you do once and never again. A rule does it every time.
- 1 Write a grouping rule per kind of source.
A rule is the sites it covers, a group name and a colour: github.com grouped as Code, the documentation sites you use grouped as Docs, the journals and preprint servers you read grouped as Papers. A rule can also match words in the page title, and leave a site out with a
!. From then on, automatic tab grouping by domain happens as each page opens. Five rules are free; more is Pro. - 2 Sort what is already open in one press.
Group by site, or by kind, gathers the tabs you have now. Collapse every group to get the strip back, expand the one you are working in. The details are on the auto-group tabs page.
- 3 See every window in one list.
GitHub tabs spread across three windows are hard to manage from the strip. Open tabs lists every tab in every window, filtered as you type - type the repository name and every issue and pull request from it is in front of you. Move a tab to any window, or merge one window into another.
- 4 Catch the duplicates between projects.
The same pull request open in two project windows is marked as a duplicate, and the extra copies close in one go. To stop the next one, see close duplicate tabs.
- 5 Jump to a tab by typing.
Quick switch searches open tabs by title and address, plus recently closed tabs and your history if you allow them. Press CtrlK in the popup, or give the quick-switch command a key of your own.
Reading your tabs needs permission, which Latr asks for the first time you open a screen that uses it - the install dialog itself shows no warnings.
Projects
Save each research project as a window, and restore the session later
A browser session saver for developers only has to do one thing well: put a project's tabs away intact and bring them back intact. In Latr that is a saved window - every tab, plus its tab groups with their names, colours and collapsed state.
Switch projects without losing either
“Open here instead of this window” saves the window you are in, closes it and opens the saved one in its place. Managing multiple research projects becomes swapping one window for another, not reading through forty tabs to work out which ones belong.
Resume an online research session on a date
Give a saved window a time to come back - Monday morning, the day the review is due - and it returns as a reminder. Wrap up the day saves and closes every window at once. Autosave and save-on-close cover the sessions you forgot to save. More on the session manager page.
Share the reading, in one link
A saved window or a library selection becomes one link carrying up to 50 pages, their titles and addresses inside the link itself. Send the onboarding docs to a new teammate or the sources to a co-author - see sharing tabs.
Reading
Reopen documentation at the section you were reading
A long reference page or an HTML paper is not a page you finish in one sitting. Reopening it at the top means scrolling and skimming to find the paragraph you were on, every time.
Your place, kept
When you save a page with a time, or keep it without one, Latr notes the line at the top of the screen. When the page comes back, the browser scrolls straight to it. That is how it saves technical documentation reading progress without a script running on the page. It works in Chrome, Edge and Firefox. More on reading position.
Highlights you can search
Select a passage, right-click, and choose Save this highlight. It lands on that page's record in the library, and the library search finds the page by the passage - useful when you remember the sentence but not the source. In Chrome and Edge, Open with highlights marks the passages on the page again.
A reading list that tracks itself
Keep the articles you need to read in a library folder - unlimited folders, subfolders and up to ten tags per page - and turn on Track progress. The folder shows how many are done out of how many, and Open next opens the next one you have not marked done. Drag to set the order.
Find what you never got to
The Never opened filter lists the sources you saved and did not read. Give any kept page a time and it becomes a reminder, so the paper you skipped comes back the week the draft is due.
Focus
A Pomodoro timer for coding in the browser
Research and code both need stretches of attention that a tab strip of notifications and feeds keeps breaking. Latr's focus sessions are free, and they know which pages the session is about.
- 1 Make a focus bundle for the project.
A bundle is a set of pages that open when a session starts: the repository, the issue, the docs you need. A session started from it always lets its own pages through.
- 2 Choose what stays shut.
Block a list of sites, or allow only a list, for the focus legs - not the breaks. A blocked tab is redirected to a page that offers your task back. It is a redirect, not a network filter, so a page may flash before it goes.
- 3 Start, and close the popup.
25 minutes on, 5 off, a longer break every four rounds by default, all adjustable. The timer runs in the extension, the toolbar shows the time left, and reminders that fall due wait for the break. More on the Pomodoro timer page.
Limits
What it does not do for research
Latr organises the pages you work from. It is not every tool a research project needs, and it is better to know where the edges are before you rely on it.
Not included
- It is not a reference manager: no citations, no bibliography export.
- It keeps a page's address, title and, if you want one, a picture - not a copy of its text. If a page disappears from the web, Latr cannot bring it back.
- Saved windows stay on the computer they were made on. Optional sync carries reminders, not windows; a share link carries a saved window to another computer, and a backup file carries your reminders and library.
- No phone or tablet version, and no Safari.
What it is for
- Keeping a project's tabs together, sorted as they open.
- Putting a project away and bringing it back intact.
- Getting back to your place in a long page.
- Working through a reading list, and focusing while you do.
Questions
Research tabs, asked directly
How do I group research tabs by topic automatically?
Write a grouping rule: the sites or title words a topic covers, a group name and a colour. From then on every matching page you open joins that tab group on its own - github.com into Code, your documentation sites into Docs. Tabs you grouped yourself and pinned tabs are never moved. Five rules are free, and Latr Pro raises the limit.
Can I keep separate tabs for several research projects?
Yes - save each project’s window and give it a name. A saved window keeps its tabs and its tab groups, names and colours included, and a named one is never rotated away by autosave. “Open here instead of this window” swaps the window you are in for a saved one, saving the current one first, so switching projects never loses either. Saved windows are free and unlimited.
Can it reopen documentation at the section I was reading?
Yes, in Chrome, Edge and Firefox. When you save or keep a page, Latr notes the line of text at the top of the screen and reopens the page with the browser scrolled to it, so a long reference page comes back at the section you were in rather than at the top. If the page has changed so much that the line is gone, it also opens at the top.
How do I find duplicate tabs across development projects?
Open tabs lists every tab in every window and marks duplicates with the word, so the same pull request open in two project windows is easy to spot. You can close the extra copies per window or everywhere at once, keeping the original. Duplicate prevention, if you turn it on, takes you to the tab you already had instead of opening a second copy from a link.
Can I share a collection of documentation links with my team?
Select the pages in the library, or take a saved window, and copy one link. It carries up to 50 pages with their titles and addresses inside the link itself - nothing is uploaded or stored on a server. A colleague without Latr sees the list and can open any page in it; a colleague with Latr in Chrome or Edge adds them all in one click. Notes, tags and pictures stay on your machine.
Is there a Pomodoro timer for coding in the browser?
Yes, and it is free. The default is 25 minutes of focus, a 5-minute break and a longer break every four rounds, all adjustable. It runs inside the extension, so it keeps counting when the popup closes, and the toolbar shows the time left. Reminders that fall due during focus wait for the break, and you can block or allow sites for the focus legs only.
Does it store my research anywhere online?
No. Everything stays in your browser’s own extension storage, there is no account, and a free install makes no network requests. If you turn on sync, reminders - not saved windows - travel through your browser’s own sync. A JSON backup, CSV, Markdown or bookmarks file is one button in settings.
Close the tab.
It will come back.
Free, no account, and nothing leaves your device. About ten seconds to install, and one keystroke to use.
Also on Brave, Vivaldi, Arc and Opera - straight from the Chrome Web Store listing.