Instant Tab Sync between Computers

[xanthos84]

Hi everyone,

I love the idea of zen browser, and i can see how far this can go in some years!
I am one of the "ARC switchers" and I am missing my instant sync feature of all open tabs to my browser between all my computers.
If you switch from one device to another, its so handy to have your complete "session" with all open tabs and workspaces ready to work on.

And as there are no other browsers around with that feature beside ARC, it would be a huge USP for Zen in my opinion.

[Hary309]

Yeah, this is very weird arc was the first to come up with this idea.

[Gamedirection]

Tab Session Manager has been a good work around for myself.

[Gamedirection]

https://floccus.org/ has also been a great solution if you utilize Nextcloud at all too.

[nms808]

Tab Session Manager has been a good work around for myself.

This!

[rgdcastro]

Tab Session Manager has been a good work around for myself.

This doesn't work if you have folders.

[friendywill]

Probably naive solution

From what I understand, if this feature was implemented, the pain point of workspaces not syncing to Firefox mobile (I understand that the synchronised tab feature exists, but the workspace organisation of tabs, pinned tabs and favourites does not) still exists.

So, why not have a reserved bookmark folder for the Zen Browser? Here is what I am thinking:

• Prefix a top-level bookmark folder with zen:
• Suffix this bookmark folder with ${Profile}
• Each folder contains a ${workspace} folder, and their respective tabs.

Zen would then detect, and deal with this accordingly, then hiding the bookmarks in the bookmark bar prefixed with zen: (I am unsure if this is problematic). This would require a diff like system between the synchronised bookmarks and the state of the workspaces, at least, in theory.

This would alleviate, and mitigate some pain points with the sync feature suggestion:

• Their would be, at the very least, another way to access your pinned tabs on mobile. (Synchronised tabs seems to work temperamentally for me)
• You will only have to sign into Mozilla to have these particular items synchronised.

I am not sure if modifying user bookmarks is touching on a sensitive topic for some, so obviously something like this would have to be an optional setting.

Other potential advantages:

• Settings synchronisation, where another tab named after a reserved string could be used. That tab will contain some URL, eg https://zen-browser.app/users?=${USERID}. Once the tab is recgonized by Zen, it will open that URL, which will have Mozilla SSO authentication to protect the contents. No config file to worry about.
• Future support for folders and sub-folders, where workspaces could have tab folders and tab sub-folders and it would translate well into the bookmark. Currently, subfolders in the bookmarks (representing workspaces) could just be handled by ignoring sub-folders but including their respective tabs in the workspace.
• Future support for trees, where subfolders could just have empty names.

I am not a full-time developer, so if someone could please tell me if this would be difficult to implement, because at the surface it seems like an easy option.

[FancyFurret]

I would love if this was implemented

[Alintya]

Currently my biggest pain point as an arc switcher myself (well, besides firefox/gecko having countless issues due to everything being made for chromium).

[yashcrest]

sadly im still on arc :(

[the-ult]

Yeah, same here.
Really would like to switch to Zen. But having too many issues.

• Sites not working properly
• settings/short-cuts sometimes working and the next day not anymore
• 1password not being unlocked (although zen browser is added to the allowed browsers in 1password)
  • although this might be a 1password problem..

But the main thing, might be the (missing) of the auto-sync of my open tabs. Loving that about Arc

[yashcrest]

this and the little arc feature.

[Woofer21]

Bumping this! Missing my tabs and sessions syncing between my mac and pc :(

[barrymichaeldoyle]

Another week another bump :) It would be an absolute game changer if I can have instant (or at least near instant syncing between my Mac and PC!

[SCGilbert]

Bumping as well - I'd love to make the swap to Zen and this is currently the last hurdle for me to overcome. I'm currently using Chrome's experimental "Tab Groups Save and Sync V2" and "Tab Groups Save UI Update" to do this within chrome/brave/vivaldi and it works sort ofalright. Iirc Arc and Edge are the only browsers available that treated this as a first-class feature, but neither will support Linux/Windows/MacOS together which is (unfortunately) essential for my work.

[SCGilbert]

Coming back to this as I've just found that Edge does actually support Linux now (previously you had to use older versions that were giving me trouble) so that's at least an option now for people in a similar situation as me. Only downside is that now you're on Edge 😏

Zen, pls save me.

[mFontoura]

Just found out this was not a feature after coming home from work and not having my tabs that I organized at work :/

[amitbartfeld]

Bumping this too - it's one of the most important features for me since I constantly switch between my laptop and home PC and I need sync. Until now it was one of the only features I've enjoyed in ARC's Windows version. I've used Chrome's Tab group sync feature which gets the job done but I really want to fully move to Zen.
Hope this feature will be added soon!

[smilingpeanut]

Bumping as well. I thought that Firefox Sync did this so I was excited to try out Zen, but now that I have it set up on both computers, there is no sync and I has a sad.

[omsharp]

Bump!

I just installed Zen and finished organizing my tabs on my desktop, then went to install it on my laptop and found it doesn't sync tabs!! This is a huge deal breaker for me. I was making the move from Arc but without this feature I don't think I can make it.

[jallalcode]

Bumping. I feel like this is really significant to user experience

[12th-devs]

+1

[phendan]

This is the single biggest feature that's currently keeping me stuck on Arc as someone who goes between devices a lot, where manually copying over a bunch of tabs all the time would be a nightmare. As much as Zen's superior performance and active development make switching very tempting, having the browser feel like just a window to my work wherever I happen to be has been incredibly useful and hard to let go of.

I also understand that this is probably one of the more complex features to implement though. It interacts with a lot of other features and there are a bunch of (presumably) non-obvious decisions to be made (around where to sync to and reconciling different sets of tabs). So basically I'm expecting to have to be patient here, but this is currently the feature that would make Zen my daily driver if implemented.

[KarlJussila]

+1 from a long time Arc user who really doesn't want to have to keep using Microsoft Edge of all things in a Linux/Windows dual boot and multi-device setup. I'm fine with the limitations of Firefox, but I just can't live without automatic tab syncing.

[SamuelYancy]

Bump. Tap syncing across devices is THE feature I require to use Zen over Arc.

[abelsuzihan]

+1... this is a crucial feature, hope Zen could support it

[friedrichjaum]

+1

[Marabbekka]

+1

[ochronus]

+1

[Dufery]

+1

[lemonilemon]

Bump! Loving Zen as my Arc alternative, but this bit’s still missing.

[ocueye2]

The problem with this is that there needs to be back end infrastructure that stores your tabs and recalls it. that would also mean you would need an account and would also change the whole privacy focused idea. you could do a LAN peer to peer version using qr codes where the qr code encodes IP, port, and secret but if a device gets disconnected and both change local ip's then you will have to reconnect them. you could also just store tab data in a qr code but it could be to big for that.

[fredrikaverpil]

A simple and somewhat ok solution to that is to provide the ability to specify a filepath where this data would be saved?
On macOS it could go to iCloud. On Windows, OneDrive. Or DropBox, Google Drive etc etc. That would however not necessarily solve cross-OS syncing (iCloud isn't a thing on Linux for example).

[heyJordanParker]

We have bookmarks that are already synced. No extra backend is necessary. Just the correct parsing & a hidden bookmarks folder.

(as one solution, obviously; more are certainly available)

[ocueye2]

A simple and somewhat ok solution to that is to provide the ability to specify a filepath where this data would be saved? On macOS it could go to iCloud. On Windows, OneDrive. Or DropBox, Google Drive etc etc. That would however not necessarily solve cross-OS syncing (iCloud isn't a thing on Linux for example).

could just do git as a private repo

[nirbhaykwatra]

Obsidian has something similar, you can have an auto-pull set up with a private repo. There could also be the possibility of a self-hosted solution for sync.

[aquafraternal]

Syncthing does a pretty good job of providing secure peer-to-peer file syncing between computers, even over the Internet. I’m not going to claim to know the ins-and-outs of that software package, so maybe there are pitfalls I’m not aware of, but it might provide reasonable solution to the info storage issue.

[liamssi]

+1 , have been one of the early adopters of zen and this is my biggest complain so far , hope this get implemented in the near future .

[geraldzm]

+1

[Stormers16]

+1 Please implement this and I will full transition to Zen. I work in 3 different computer, having an auto-sync tabs is essencial for me.

[luweiCN]

+1

[bdbch]

I think this is the last thing (besides stability) that I miss from Arc.

I tried to read myself a bit into Firefox's sync possibilities and I have two questions:

1. Does Zen want to go for Firefox Sync as its solution? As far as I know the sync server can be self hosted so it would be a nice option to default to Mozilla's default server but give the option to use a custom server in the UI (currently you can only set the URL via about:config)
2. If it'd go for Firefox Sync, is it actually possible? As far as I know Firefox uses Sync Engines to sync content between devices - so in theory we could create a ZenWorkspace sync engine that would take over syncing data between two devices if I understand correctly?

[heyJordanParker]

With "Simple yet powerful" as a core value – the 3rd party sync is not ideal. Firefox Sync will likely be the way to go.
(right now window sync for workspaces is in development and that's step 1)