extension ExtPose

BrainTool - Beyond Bookmarks

CRX id

fialfmcgpibjgdoeodaondepigiiddio-

Description from extension meta

BrainTool is the best Bookmark and Tabs Manager for your online life.

Image from store BrainTool - Beyond Bookmarks
Description from store Organize all your bookmarks, web resources and notes into a personal online Topic hierarchy and control it via the BrainTool Topic Manager. Open and close individual browser tabs, windows and tab groups with a single click and navigate using powerful keyboard commands. Capture a link, add a note and assign a Topic while in context on a web page, all with a couple of keystrokes. Allocate each of your Topics to its own window or tab group for a focused workspace. Tame your browser tabs, focus your attention and never be afraid to delete a tab again! Your braintool data is private, it's your personal information space that the BrainTool application reads from a plain text file completely under your control. It's written in the popular Org-Mode format and so fits within any larger text-based workflow. Back it up, copy it, share it - it's just a text file that you own. Import from .org files or from Tabs Outliner, download locally and/or sync automatically to Google Drive. BrainTool is a 100% browser based application so your data never leaves your control. "Every Google Chrome user should try this...Bring your bookmarks into the 21st century" - ZDNet "I've used Session Buddy and OneTab. This is far superior." - User Review "As a current Tabs Outliner user, my first reaction is that BrainTool, even in its pre-1.0 release, is far more polished." - User Review BrainTool is hard to summarize. Its a way-better bookmarks manager, but it's also a browser manager, a tabs manager and a session manager. It's a replacement for tools like Tabs Outliner, but it's mostly a personal knowledge management system that allows you to organize all of your online information sources (web sites, Google docs, gmails, files, photos, Slack channels, social media groups, code repos, wiki pages, task backlogs, Jupyter notebooks, etc etc etc), combine them with your text-based notes and see the big picture in the tree structured side panel. It's the plain text bookmarking tool that I always wanted to exist but could never find, so I built it. I hope you like it! ------- RELEASE NOTES -------- # Welcome to BrainTool 0.9.9 ## New Look and Feel including a Dark Mode I completely revamped the BT fonts and color palette and added a dark mode - the most requested feature. ## Re-organized Saver Tool I made another iteration on whats been called the bookmarker or popup to make it easier to understand while keeping it fast and efficient for both mouse and keyboard users. Additionally, any number of nested new topics can now be created from the Saver e.g. setting the topic to Animal:Vertebrate:Mammal:Carnivore:Canid:Dog:Hound:Beagle will create 8 levels of topic if they don't already exist. ## Compact Mode Another highly requested feature. Shrinking the Topic Manager to less than 350 pixels wide hides the notes column for a highly compact and information dense display of your saved topics and pages. ## "Open in New Window" Tool You can now open a page, or complete topic, in a new window. The previous mapping of topics to windows has been removed as being too complicated. You can choose to have BT manage your tabs, grouping them into tab groups, or not, thus leaving them wherever you or the browser puts them. BT will no longer confuse you by moving tabs between windows. ## "Add Top Level Topic" Tool Available at the top of the Topic Manager. Hopefully this one is self-explanatory. ## Topic Manager window remembers its position The Topic Manager now opens with the same size and position as it had when it was last closed. ## GDrive Refresh Button If you have GDrive syncing turned on, the Refresh button is now available in the top toolbar whenever BT detects that there is a newer file available. ## Topic Tree imports A correctly formatted org-mode file will now import its contents into the appropriate nesting in the tree. See https://braintool.org/topicTrees. ## Other Usability and Misc Improvements I removed the counter for number of saves (top right) because its no longer part of the pricing model. Lots of improvements were made in areas like the card editor, the initial topic tree, the initial placement of the topic manager etc. # BrainTool 0.9.8 ## New Bookmarker To address some confusion and to make the 'popup' more usable I've re-designed it from the ground up and done some rebranding. I'm now calling the popup 'Bookmarker'. Clicking the BT icon (or Opt/alt-b) now opens the Bookmarker showing the note card for the page with the Notes field selected. You can still just hit enter to move on without adding a note, for speed. This new card editor also allows you to edit the page title and it's where you can select to save all tabs or just the active one. On exit the card editor opens the topic selector. This was also reworked to show a clearer view of your topic hierarchy. The hierarchy starts partially open and subtopics can be opened, closed and selected with your mouse. Auto complete works as before, just start typing. The previous 'Group', 'Stick', 'Close' options have been reduced to a selector for 'Group' or 'Close'. The selector remembers its start and defaults to that the next time around. ## Skip the Topic! By popular demand I added a 'Scratch' topic. If you leave the topic selector empty the page (or pages) will be added under the Scratch topic. This means you can save a page, or all pages in the window, by bringing up the Bookmarker and hitting Enter twice, the first creates the note card with an empty note, the second saves the page under Scratch. ## Update existing note cards in the Bookmarker With this new bookmarker design I was able to add the ability to edit the notes and title for existing saved pages. Opening the Bookmarker for a page already saved to BT will open it's note card and save any updates. (NB changing its topic still needs to be done in the Topic Manager.) ## Side Panel is now Topic Manager and can run in a tab The term 'Side Panel' did not make sense to folks so its been renamed to Topic Manager. Based on a suggestion from Crimson K and validation from Timothy, I added an option for the Topic Manager to run in a browser tab rather than the current side panel. Its not optimized for this form factor and for me it works better as a panel off to the side of my browser tabs but it seemed worth adding to support a full-page-on-top type setup. From Options, change 'Topic Manager in:' from 'Side Panel' to 'Tab', wait a few seconds for it to save, then close the Topic Manager. When you relaunch, the Topic Manager will open in a regular browser tab. If you use it in this mode I'd be interested in feedback over in the discussion group. ## Performance Improvements Thanks to Timothy for stressing BT with his six thousand plus bookmarks! A small tweak to avoid a low level recalculation of layout for every table row added resulted in a significant speed up on first start with a big braintool.org file. Search got similar performance attention and should now be snappier. ## Search Improvements Thanks to Peter for his detailed feedback on Search. Improvements include better key handling on Linux, being able to 'escape' key out of search, restoring previous selection on failed search and a few other bug fixes. ## Space key Also based on Peter's feedback, the space key will now open a tab for the selected item if its not already open, and highlight it if it is open. # BrainTool 0.9.7 ## Search See the new User Guide for details, or just try playing with it and let me know what you think. ## Best effort mapping of open tabs to saved links on startup When you first launch BrainTool it will attempt to find any tabs which you have already saved into your braintool.org file and show them as open in the tree. ## Selection in tree now tracks highlighted tab in browser As you navigate tabs in the browser any matching row in the BT tree will be selected (and scrolled into view). ## Onboarding and usability updates - I trimmed the initial BrainTool.org file contents to be less overwhelming. - The initial first-click popup now explains the side panel and popup. - When the side panel is closed the popup icon now shows an indication that BT is not running. ## Bug fixes - BT now saves correctly on keyboard number based folding and keyboard row moves. - Topic nodes with no links are now placed correctly in the hierarchy. - Better handling of Google Drive versioning should remove spurious warnings about a newer file version existing. - Tab navigation now works correctly on the topic card editor. ## User Guide: see https://braintool.org/support/userGuide # BrainTool 0.9.6 ## Cleaner more minimal UI Based on the results of a comprehensive review by a panel of designers and UX folks I've moved to a cleaner more minimal UI with bigger buttons, more spacing and clearer backgrounds. ## Improved onboarding process Combined with the general UI improvements I overhauled the installation and getting started process to try to address areas where new users were getting confused and to get them up and running with less effort. ## Support for Edge and Brave browsers Edge users can get BrainTool at the Edge store. Brave users can install from the Chrome store. Unfortunately Firefox does not support the tab groups function BT needs and has other incompatibilities that made it too onerous for me to support it in this release. Vivaldi (installable via the Chrome store) works with Topic mapping set to 'Windows'. ## Added support for subscription memberships and coupons In advance of the 1.0 version of BrainTool I needed to put some structure in place to allow me to charge for premium subscriptions. See the in-app coupon offer! ## Version warnings for synced Google Drive file If you've chosen to sync to a Drive file BrainTool now checks before saving, and on getting focus, whether there's a more recent version than the one you are viewing and if so provides an alert (if saving) or warning. # BrainTool 0.9.1a Updated Topic Card editor and navigation. # BrainTool 0.9 ## File Import/Export In addition to Chrome Bookmarks, 0.9 adds the ability to import from a TabsOutliner export and also to import a text file with org-mode markup. Heading, paragraph text and contained http(s) links are extracted and represented in the tree. In addition to exporting to Bookmarks you can now also export an org file. ## org-mode Support BrainTool should now retain any org markup in the BrainTool.org file (or an imported file). BT stores app data using headers for Topics, headers with links for topic occurrences (ie links) and paragraph text for notes. Other constructs such as lists, tables, blocks etc will just be shown in plain text in the tree and written back out as such. This allows BrainTool to become an integral part of a text and org-based note taking and productivity workflow. ## No GDrive Dependency By default BT now stores your data in Chrome local storage. This should be resilient across browser sessions on a single Chrome instance. Its still advisable to also write to the BrainTool.org file on your GDrive but not necessary. ## Other Minor Improvements * New Keyboard commands - entering 1 through 9 now collapses the tree to the numbered level (e.g. hit '2' to show just the top two levels of the tree) * URLS of the form file:/// are now supported, type something like file:///users/tconfrey/Documents/ into Chrome's address bar and save it into your BT tree! * Tree folding and unfolding now has a slight animation to help maintain your bearings. * The popup now has some descriptive hover text and an explicit 'Save' button which does the same thing as just hitting Enter in the Notes field. # BrainTool 0.8 ## Support for Release Notes! Hopefully you are seeing this page as a result of being upgraded to the new version of BrainTool. I also added a [Welcome](welcome.md) page for new installs, feel free to check it out. See also the general [Support](../support.md) page. ## Keyboard shortcuts Key bindings were influenced by emacs/org-mode. Commands operating on the selection are as follows: - Tree Navigation/Display: - n, p or up/down arrow keys select the 'n'ext or 'p'revious row. - Navigation with the right and left arrow functions to open and close nodes while navigating the tree. - Tab expands or collapses the subtree for a Topic row. - Browser Control: - Space surfaces the selections' tab or window if it's open in the browser. (NB you also get this by double clicking a row.) - Enter toggles open/close the selected links tab in the browser, or all of its tabs if its a Topic. - Tree Editing: - Opt-up/down arrows move the selection up/down. - t cycles the TODO state. - e opens the editor for the selection. - Opt-left arrow outdents (promotes) the selection. - delete deletes the selected topic or occurrence. - Opt-enter creates a new child Topic. In addition there are the following general keys: - h Keyboard commands can be shown any time by typing 'h'. - Opt-z undoes the last deletion. Note that previous versions of your BrainTool file are saved by Google on your GDrive. - Opt-b opens the BrainTool popup on the current browser tab. - Opt-b-b opens and selects the BrainTool side panel. ## Ability to tag all a windows tabs at once ## Statistics Bar - Showing the topic's full parentage in the topic editor popup. - Better pre-fills for the topic to use in the popup. - Improvements to keeping tabs assigned to tab groups properly during navigation. # BrainTool 0.7 - New grouping options were introduced. - Window, as before one window per Topic. - Tab Group - a tab group per Topic. - None - no active grouping, tabs are created in place. - New Topic insert button. Add a sub topic under any topic. - Support for topics with no links to occurrences. - Updated icons. - The BT toolbar badge scrolls to show full tag name and shows notes on hover and in the popup (read-only). - double-tap option-b to surface BT window

Latest reviews

  • (2023-05-24) Maxwell Thum: I've been looking for an extension like this for a long time. I haven't used it for long, but so far I like it more than Toby because Toby doesn't have folder hierarchy (as far as I can tell). A little unpolished still, but it seems to get the job done. I'm a bit sorry to see that it hasn't been updated in a year.
  • (2023-01-12) Alice Free: I downloaded this about 30 minutes ago and my pistons are firing at full speed. Whenever you try a new tool, you go through your very specific needs for it and check things off as you go in the order of your priority. If it lacks those top functionalities, full stop and find something else. Towards the bottom of the list of needs, you ask if you can live without the function or wait until it's there. It truly feels like the developers KNOW my brain. I checked off every bullet point on my list of needs and then some. I don't know how I ever lived without it. What it does is everything that the baked in bookmark manager maybe could have done, but doesn't do well. I wish I had time to give the full on list of why this is so amazing, but as people like me generally have 10 windows open with 10 tab groups in each window... I'll circle back when I have time. lol Pretty amazing thus far. Hoping it stays up to date and curious to see how feature requests go. Going to go close tabs now. Ciao!
  • (2023-01-10) HighTemplarTreant: I only dreamed about something like this. Tony made it real! Thanks a looot!
  • (2022-12-30) 3 BLOOM: It's pretty good, wish I could make a new folder while saving pages though.
  • (2022-12-27) william liu: I have been looking for an extension that would allow me to manage my bookmarks and tabs. I tried a few other options and I prefer Braintool by far. I am so impressed by all the features and I love how it asks for minimal permission. Highly recommended!
  • (2022-12-03) Sam: Great extension, interesting features!
  • (2022-11-30) Radu L.: I very much wished it worked. The whole idea is great, the implementation is not. Is very buggy. Most importantly the sync between browsers doesn't work properly. You can have your entire tree of bookmarks wiped off. Also, in Edge it forgets the settings sometimes. The UI is very clunky, outdated, lame colors and fonts. It can be a good extension if used in Chrome and don't synchronize.
  • (2022-11-27) Max Learning: well done！i like it
  • (2022-11-16) Andy Briesemeister: Naja geht so, viel zu umständlich in der Handhabung. Also Benutzerfreundlich ist diese Erweiterung schon einmal gar nicht. Hat zwar ein paar gute Funktionen, die bringen einen leider nicht viel, weil es einfach zu umständlich ist. Somit ist es im Alltag unbrauchbar.
  • (2022-10-29) mood moof: Actually I used Pocket for years to manage my bookmarks, articles read later, etc. However, really I was not satisfied with some setting and wrote some mails to Pocket team but never got a feedback and never got an improvement. Last week one of my friend recommended me this BrainTool and I tried it for days so far, I could not say that this is the best bookmark manager but I could say this is the right one for me. Anyone in case you wanna get more detail please refer to the page: https://braintool.org instead of my comments due to there are too many instruction here wrote by other guys. Install it and give it a try!
  • (2022-10-27) Deborah Tahlman: Exciting to have a bookmarking extension that allows for this much dialing in and personalization to allow me to organize things how I see fit. I also like that you can make the menu either a separate tab or a sidebar. I appreciate the extension dev keeping our privacy as users.
  • (2022-10-26) Hope Wells: I'm happy with this app. I have tried 8-12 different bookmark manager extensions for chrome and I've tried an equal amount on edge. I am yet to find one that is EXACTLY what I am looking for, but then again I'm unsure if I even know EXACTLY what I am looking for. I like that this app does a lot of the organization I need for me and I also love that I can add notes to my bookmarks. So many bookmark manager extensions and apps do not offer this feature which is surprising to me since it seems like such a necessity in my opinion. The note feature and the excellent "how-to" instructions on the developers website are the main reasons I love this app. You can tell that BRAINTOOL really means something to the creator. I also love that this is opensource and I hope to purchase the premium version soon.
  • (2022-10-24) satyam: As a graduate researcher who tends to get lost down many rabbit holes this helps brings sanity to my research endeavor. Helping compartmentalize different topics is a great way to subdue the overwhelming tab stacks.
  • (2022-10-21) Mazen “rookiejet”: I've tried a bunch of bookmark and tab/link organization tools over the years, in-browser and outside, all the while wishing I had some nicer bridge between those tools and org-mode (where I prefer to work with that data). I think I might have finally found that bridge in this extension.
  • (2022-10-17) Bill Ott: Finally! A solution to using Window's Task Manager as a workaround to killing multi-tab instances of Chrome and Edge so they will "Restore" after a Windows or browser update or restart. Maybe your browser sessions are like mine--multiple instances of Chrome or Edge open at the same time, each containing multiple tabs of related content searches. My instances and tabs stay open long past their usefulness because I'm hesitant to lose the "link history" I spent so much time researching. And of course, at just the wrong time, along comes a Windows or Chrome update notification creating concern over losing open browser tabs. And after those browsers restore, their windows need sizing to the dimensions they had before. It's an ongoing pain. I've tried saving browser bookmarks by subject, but link descriptions rarely provide enough information to be useful. With BrainTool, my tab collections are now organized by topic, and each tab can be annotated in detail. I no longer feel pressure to keep windows and tabs open just to preserve their history. BrainTool lets me easily open saved links--either individually or as a collection of topic-related tabs--with just one click. No more stressing over lost work! The user interface took some time to learn, but wasn't overly complicated. Braintool's articles are informative and well-written. Learning really took off once I started saving my open tabs and assigning them to topics using Braintool's Topic Manager. It wasn't long before the process became intuitive and I was on my way. I now spend little blocks of time assigning my remaining open tabs and bookmarks to topics as it's convenient. And those Windows and Chrome Update notifications are no longer the threat they once were. Opening and restoring browser sessions are single-click simple, and each tab is organized and archived efficiently and descriptively. Thanks Braintool!
  • (2022-10-05) Nocturnal Owl Digitalist: I have installed this addon 2 weeks ago and learned about from people who were looking for better bookmark system but since then I am not able to see how to use it or how useful it is for me? Can dev of this addon make a guide or explain us what it is and how useful it is or worthy it is to use? Wont be uninstalling until then. Thanks.
  • (2022-10-05) Inspired Earth: The short story: BrainTool rocks. If you do a lot of work in browsers, and end up with way too many tabs open on a regular basis, get BrainTool. The long story: As a web developer, with numerous clients on the go at any one time, plus lots of personal interests that I pursue online, I'm someone who regularly has 250+ tabs open, across 15+ windows. Right now, I have 258 tabs on 13 windows. It causes major performance issues on my computer. I literally have to buy more RAM just to accomodate Chrome's need for it. Reading a comment from another reviewer, Mark Ostlund, "I have too many tabs and never want to reboot because I have so much in process. Then I run out of memory even though I have 20GB plus and I am forced to reboot and start the process of acquiring tabs all over again." ... all I can say is I 100% relate. It describes me to a T. I've been using tab managers of one kind or another for perhaps the last 15 to 20 years. Originally on Firefox, then on Chrome / Brave (since it's easiest to do my development work on Chrome). For the past few years I've used Tabs Outliner. It does the job, although I've obviously not taken to it in the way that I should, considering how many memory munching tabs I have open right now. The main issue I have with Tabs Outliner is I couldn't really organise my tab collections in a useful way. So they end up in a massive tree and get lost to time, so then I feel disinclined to save stuff to it as often as I should or could. BrainTool seems to address the many shortcomings of Tabs Outliner. It's great. I just wish I could migrate my tabs from Tabs Outliner. I see BrainTool can import a "Tabs Outliner Export" file, but I can't for the life of me see where in T.O. I can export such a file. So for now, I'll be using both extensions.
  • (2022-10-04) Kerry Channing: So I haven't seen a plugin like this before, I use roam research to organise my information but it doesn't look after bookmarks. I'd love the ability to sync this data into roam research but until then, this is just great standalone because I can much more easily manage bookmarks across devices, which suddenly opens it up to me. I've not seen a bookmark manager before. Love the fact it syncs across devices too using portable text file which I am currently testing, and I do feel this will be something that I integrate more in all my browser windows and move away from active tabs to curated tabs using braintool! All seems to work fine so 5 stars from me.
  • (2022-10-03) An Vuong: BrainTools does give you very deep ability to organize your links colllection, especially if you are OCD about categorization. The text format is great for if you want to integrate it with your workflow or other tools or backup. The keyboard shortcut support is awesome. Area that could be improve are the synchronization. It supports Google Drive sync and also local file sync (that you can use with your own sync solution such as Dropbox or OneDrive or Syncthing...) During my testing, I found out that Google Drive sync does work but it is very finicky and has a couple of important caveats. Not sure why for me, but I need to setup the sync again everytime I open the browser. It also does not refresh automatically but you need to click on a message to reload new data so there are quite a high potential for lost / overriding data in that case. For non-sync bookmark organization, single computer use this extension is great as is. The developer is very responsive so I believe the sync use case will be improve in future releases.
  • (2022-10-03) Gaurav Bhatnagar: Chrome's management of bookmarks is subpar -- it lacks many capabilities regarding moving folders and mass moving bookmarks, which has really caused the entire feature to become a pain to use for me, after using it for more than a decade. I'm glad I found BrainTool. By exposing the plaintext representation of the bookmarks, I'm able to easily reconfigure my entire hierarchy of bookmarks into whatever I need, helpful for someone who wants to constantly tweak their instance. I think the keyboard shortcuts are incredibly helpful as well and I wish Chrome could take some notes. The integrated search is useful, too.
  • (2022-10-01) Boisjère Kayasta: WORKS ACROSS TWO MONITORS! This makes the tool so powerful for me. I'm able to do my organizational thinking in some depth in the side panel, which I put in my side monitor. It's almost like a stand-alone app that controls my browser. MANAGES WHAT MATTERS: Most tab, session or bookmark managers miss what really matters. The point is to manage the *meaning*, not just the identity of the target. Most tab/bookmark managers give you the title, maybe a snippet, so you know what the site *is*. That's not enough. BrainTool lets you richly annotate each link, so you can manage what matters - the tree of meaning you are creating. Rich leaves of information don't preserve meaning alone. They need to be on a meaningful tree. With BrainTool's deep topical hierarchies, the context that gives the link meaning is richly preserved. Some link managers let you organize bookmarks into groups or spaces, often with only one level of nesting. Not enough. With such a flat tree, your bookmarks become a disorganized mess. If you use browser-native bookmark folders, you face the foldering problem of losing sight of what is in each information silo. Brain Tool overcomes that problem by using the collapsable-outline pattern made famous by Roam Research, Logseq and Workflowy - and like with those tools, you are really revealing or concealing meaningful blocks of information, not just page names in a list. Meaningful leaves on a meaningful tree - this prevents me from losing sight of why some saved item was important to me. It's obvious even without visiting the site or remembering what was on it! I'm managing the meaning in the outline, not a list of pointers. Combine that with the fact that it works across two monitors, and this extension actually flipped me from being a Firefox user back to Chrome. So I guess Alphabet has BrainTool to thank for bringing a new user to the Chrome world.
  • (2022-09-30) Kapil Bhalla: Amazingly well thought tool that makes my browser life so streamlined. Tired several tools to find way out of tab hell and none come close to the niceties of BrainTool. Some will ask to create an account, don't have friendly keyboard shortcuts (yes it matters :) ), provide limited features for free users, put data in there own control, etc... BrainTools by function of its design encourages me to operate naturally in a way that I find questioning my self. What am I trying to do or learn "topic" and the hierarchy follows to aid organization. Overall loving it so far and removed at least 3 other extensions to declutter. Thanks to the developer and the team behind BrainTool. You rock!!
  • (2022-09-28) Samuel Solórzano Ramírez: I'm one of the persons who keeps a lot of tabs open, and always open up a the session with the same tabs, and it's a never ending story of too many tabs. I've tried many different approaches, browser bookmarks, markdown files, among many other. When I came across this extension, called BrainTool I was in love with it as soon as I installed it, and learn a few thing about how to use it. It's real easy to get this use to this extension. I love the text file format approach, and all the benefits it brings. I don't see myself not using BrainTool now.
  • (2022-09-21) Minh Pham: It has never been this easy to manage all of my interests at once. I'm currently doing my PhD and my mind is always flooded with information as there are so many things that I want to read or want to review later on for my research. This extension provides an easy way to make sure that you never miss a thing. Worth a five star rate!
  • (2022-09-16) Mahesh Narayanamurthi: I was researching into organizing my ever growing list of things that I want to read to keep up to date with the exploding information on the web. BrainTool makes this job super easy with the ability to organize links, bookmarks and todos on the web. Before BrainTool I would use a combination of extensions and sometimes just copy-paste links between my notepad and the browser. I am looking forward to improving my research workflow with BrainTool.
  • (2022-09-12) Gerschel Payne: I went into this thinking, is it really possible for it to replace my tabs outliner. I've been a tabs outliner user for ten years. I've tried many extensions In my TO, it is hyper organized, notes, named windows, separators. To give this a try, I decided to create a few topics, child topics, adding notes. Closing and opening tabs. Too bad, this is close, but I'm almost too fenced in to my outliner to make the swap. This is what I was thinking. As I poked around, I discovered that I was able to import my outliners' tree. Sweet. Well I guess that's not an issue anymore. Not only that, it imported it into it's own topic using the filename and adding a note of when it was imported. It's not a perfect conversion, but it's still structured, and I have my outliner handy to finish the details. I couple of quirks, but I assume that since this is in active development, it's possible these could get fixed. When creating a new topic, you must click left of the words "Name the Topic", I had my surfingkeys enabled, and when I started typing, it through things off, so I clicked in the bounding box, but it didn't take, clicking and messing around, I discovered that it had to be to the left of these words, not just in the box. Tabs opened in browser do not automatically show up, like they do in Tabs Outliner. I can understand some users would prefer it this way, to be explicit, so I think an option would be handy. Tab history is not saved. This isn't an isolated issue with BrainTools, it happens with many organizers/outliners, even in Tabs Outliner, which was the best for many years. So this may be an api/privacy thing. If the option comes around to retain tab history, this would be a nice addition. Themeing would be nice. Colors, indentation size, possibly font choice. I have a few other ideas. But before I get that far, I'd like to see the direction this goes. Thanks for creating a good alternative, it's been years waiting to happen. P.S. - I forgot to mention grouping. This is a nice addition. Really handy. Easy to see separator. This was a long waited feature that just should've been but never was. Good touch.
  • (2022-03-21) Damian Kyc: This extension levels up working in a browser to a new level. Thank you. I would love to see that also for FF.
  • (2022-03-10) callanyvegetable today: I had been increasingly concerned with the size and lack of organization of my Bookmarks, until now. I am happy to find BrainTool to help organize and reduce the size of my bookmarks collection. Though I am just starting to use and learn BrainTool capabilities, I am happy with the simplicity of the GUI and pleased to find YouTube tutorials and online help resources. More review content to follow - after I start to fix my old bookmarks mess.
  • (2022-03-04) N ic: This is (currently) Org-Mode meets BOOKMARK management .... althought the roadmap | pricing pages show that the developer is trending towards a more "universa" TabOutliner style TAB manager CROSSED with Browser-Based OBSIDIAN ... The underlying zettyl style note structure is already there, the interface to access that Note & Annotation functionality is still NOT active. However, this app -- out of HUNDREDS i have tried or eyed -- seems to rather singularly have the potential to meet some of these multiple needs. I currenly use | try Memex Worldbrain, Raindrop.io, Diggo, Zoho, Zotero, Notion, Evernote and Obsidian .... Honestly, if i could just get something (this) that was the best parts of Memex Worldbrain, TabToolbar, and Obsidian all in one place ... i think it would be the winner. So, CURRENTLY -- a BOOKMARK toolbar (like TabOutliner) with Org-Mode elements. But SOON (we hope) it will be a much more evolved entity approximating Obsidian+MemexWorldbrain Crossed with TabOutliner
  • (2022-03-03) John Bogs: I was looking to install my current browser extension to a new chrome account when I stumbled across this. Dang... it offers all the things I've been looking for including the things I didn't even know I wanted :-) Love the left nav categories and the notes piece. makes it easy and incredibly helpful. No lore wondering why this particular page was important know I know! Great tool.
  • (2022-03-03) SERVPRO Denver North: I've used a lot of browser tools wand still seem to be on the search because none of the ones in the past did the complete job. Always something missing. That was until I found tis one. FINALLY a tool that does everything I need and more. Kudos to the developer who did the extra effort to make a tool that works!
  • (2022-03-01) Giacomo Serafini: I've been searching for a tool like this since AGES! This is a life-saver when you have endless tabs open, related to many different topics, and you feel overwhelmed by information overload.. you know what I mean. This simply works!
  • (2022-02-28) Jack Gyr: It's great! I don't need any other topic organizer. This one tool does it!
  • (2022-02-21) David Stein: This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks! An extension that integrates with org-mode. It's open-source, has a great privacy policy/philosophy, and it has active community in Google Groups. I'm looking forward to using this extension!
  • (2022-02-20) Dave M: The computer gods have smiled upon me! I've literally been searching for months to find the "perfect" tool to manage all my topics, bookmarks, links, resources, etc. I work for a large tech company and I run a business, so I have a LOT of information to manage. There's always new stuff to add, and existing links seem to be in constant need of updating. BrainTool makes this brain-dead simple (pardon the pun)! I'm also a huge fan of open source software and anything that uses plain text so I can avoid having my data locked in by proprietary file formats. So you can imagine my excitement when I learned BrainTool stores everything in a text file using org-mode format. Genius! I've installed it in three browsers on two different computers and tested syncing via Google Drive. I also edited the underlying text file using LogSeq and then refreshed/reloaded the file in BrainTool. It's awesome! I've already started converting everything over to BrainTool and ditching other methods.
  • (2022-02-18) Kamil Devonish: Been looking for a long time for a rival to the old Tabs Outliner. Bit of a learning curve but it is the investment in time necessary for anything that will apply high leverage to your workflow. An absolute game changer in terms of any browser based work.
  • (2022-02-17) Jack McCown: fantastic extension! works great for me as a bridge from the browser to org mode
  • (2022-02-14) Eveline Frei: This is on a Mac running Mojave, keeping Chrome open just about 24/7 Well, the first thing that got to me was this sentence on your pricing page: > Posting an honest 5 star review on the Chrome or Edge Web Store. An honest 5 star review? Really? 1. Import from Tabs Outliner went perfect. It took several minutes to do so but that was ok. Thank you for that! 2. It seems (never counted them) that my list contains ~5800 tabs in total. All sorted and grouped and except for the delimiter lines I used in Tabs Outliner, all of them made it across to BrainTool. 3. Closing and re-opening this list takes ~1 min which is longer than Tabs Outliner. I can accept that even though it means to have to tell Chrome to wait for the page to finish loading every time. Again, sort of acceptable as this should not happen very often on a normal day but it is very slow and needing to tell Chrome to wait is just one thing that should not happen. 4. So, I then noticed that on re-opening the Brain Tool Topic Manager, some hidden tabs were not hidden anymore even though their parent showed a collapsed child list. I had to manually go, re-expand and re-collapse the child list to have it be hidden. 5. So, I then tried to drag some topics around. First, I had the problem that it took a long time to register that I did want to drag a topic and when it finally worked, this topic became "inoperable" (for lack of a better word). It was greyed out and no actions could be performed on it for several minutes. This was just a normal topic without any children so nothing special. Closing and re-opening the BrainTool Manager Window would fix that but really? Wait 1 min every time, after dragging 1 tab to another place in the list? 6 I then scrolled down the list a bit and fell over another link/topic that was greyed out. Mousing over the link showed the possible actions on another topic/link further down the page...well...not so good. Again, closing and re-opening the BrainTool Manager Window would fix that but really? Wait 1 min every time, after dragging 1 tab to another place in the list? 7. Trying to authorise Gdrive Auto-save failed because BrainTool wants to open a popup and i have disabled popups and so I can't enable it. I had to switch the BrainTool Manager window to a tab so I had access to the toolbar and the location bar to enable popups for this page. I would accept this a a Chrome and user problem as it had been my decision to block popups a loooong time ago and my knowledge of the information an extension has access to is limited. Displaying the error that is returned by Chrome is positive. 8. I opened a link in a new tab. It never showed up in the BrainTool Manager Window. Closing and re-opening the BrainTool Manager Window didn’t help with it at all. 9. The following happened when I created a new tab by using <cmd>-T (I use a Mac): 9.1. the tab is appended to the far right in the window 9.2. a few seconds later, the tab is moved to the far left 9.3. somewhere in the BrainTool Manager window (I am sure there is a logic to it because it is always the same location), totally unrelated to the window I am in, this new tab is shown I do wonder whether it would fix itself once I clean up as described in point 4 but my patience ran out. Yes, I accept that I didn't restart my browser at any point and because of the slowness of BranTool, I might have hesitated too much in closing and re-opening the manager window as well... So...did you want a 5 star or an honest review? I am not normally someone who posts a lot of reviews but because of the call for the "honest 5 star" review, I decided to write down my impressions of BrainTool and going fo honest rather than 5 star.
  • (2022-02-14) Sven Agnew: I'm thoroughly impressed with Braintool! It is, as others have already said, an incredibly powerful tool for managing browser workflows and I've personally come to rely on it as a valuable tool in my professional and personal knowledge management systems. The fact that it uses Org-mode behind the scenes and is essentially plain-text is really great as it removes any concerns around vendor-lock in based on proprietary formats and makes synchronization a breeze across other devices / platforms. Being keyboard driven is an even bigger plus - I personally find nothing more annoying that a feature-ful browser application that doesn't support the keyboard. Braintool allows me to keep my hands on the keyboard and therefore there is no slowdown as I navigate the interface and the various browser tabs I have open during the course of my day. Super super tool - a must-have for any serious professional.
  • (2022-02-13) Cory-Paul Allen: I am a browser tab addict. I have sacrificed my computer's memory and resources to feed my browser tab habit. This is my story. When I found my first tab manager extension for Chrome, it made a huge difference for me and my computer. It was extremely intuitive and easy to use, until I overwhelmed it and grew frustrated with the challenges of organizing it. More and more tab managers became available. I tried them but ended up back with that One tried and true TM. I tried others, and finally found one that Outlined my frustrations with solutions. I could organize it in ways my old standby couldn't. Eventually, it wasn't enough either. I began the search again. Here I am now with BrainTool. I didn't know it until I found it, but I needed to move beyond bookmarks. The higher level framework for managing topics and organizing tabs is ideal. The additional advantage of a text file root, the ability to move between browsers with a common extension, an active development process, and accessible developers and community all contribute to 5 star usability. My browser tab habit no longer means I'm less productive. I am a tab browser addict. Now I have the tool to keep it from overwhelming my computer. Thank you.
  • (2022-02-13) Matt Gorle: This is fantastic. It's powerful and really cool. I often have several distinct groups of browser tabs open at once. For example: - "these 6 tabs" are for the payment integration that I'm implementing right now, - "those 4 tabs" are about this external service platform that I'm integrating, - I'm logged into various work tools and utilities in these 5-8 pinned tabs and - there are a few interesting sites on things that I'm researching in this random assortment of tabs over here. This is _hard_ to manage. Did I want this tiny tab or that one? I want to close just "this group" because I've finished that task and I'm ready to move onto the next one. Oh, now I want to go back to the group of tabs that I was working on half an hour ago. BrainTool just makes this so much easier. I can organise these tabs into "Topics", search for them, open individual pages, or the entire group (and change the order that they open in), and the whole lot syncs between browsers. As an added bonus, the internal format is org-mode. This is huge!
  • (2022-02-13) longhuan zhou: It's such a great tool for me! I used to use the original chrome bookmarks system, but i have over 45000 bookmarks, it's too pain to handle such amount of bookmarks. fortunately i found braintool! It's my favourite tool now :D
  • (2022-02-10) Hezirel: I was searching for an alternative to TabsOutliner since the maintainer has abandoned the project. BrainTool is everything i was searching for in a tabs manager tool that TO couldn't provide. I can classify and retrieve easily a lot of data assigned to different project hierarchy. It allow for a far greater organization of information in your browsing data.
  • (2022-02-08) Mateusz Nj: I'm looking for some good extension for managing session, tabs and bookmarks that allows for quick overview and organization. That's what BrainTool is created for and looking at it's roadmap it could be only better with future releases.
  • (2022-02-08) Sooheon Kim: If you've ever used getamna.com but wanted more hackability, this is it. It's containerization for web browsing. Tabs and browser sessions should be ephemeral and instantly recreateable. You shouldn't have to keep things in your wetware RAM, and the context for each of your projects should be self contained. This is the extension that made me come back to chrome.
  • (2022-02-06) Patrick Orwig: Like most of us, I have many projects going on spanning personal and work areas that often require a fair amount of research, reading, and most importantly quick access to information. The concept behind this tool lends itself to finding items quickly across the web, multiple platforms in use by my clients, and my personal workflow. The hierarchy permitted in Topic Manager is very conducive to 'quick switch' from one project to another and the extension makes saving links into the correct area a breeze. Managing the Topic Manager is particularly easy for me with ALT up and down arrow and node level view by number - the feels feel natural to me based on my extensive use of OneNote 2016 in outline view. For me - it just makes sense. With my widescreen monitor opened to Brain Tool Topic Manager and Chrome 20%/80% I feel like I am navigating efficiently and I am able to collapse Brain Tool Topic Manager to get really focused in a particular project/subject area. I am looking forward to the next developments in the extension. I have been using this tool and coming back to it consistently for months and it is becoming a part of my solution process. I expect most users would benefit from giving this tool a try. Great addition to my toolkit.
  • (2022-02-04) Jack L.: I have only just started playing around with this extension and I'm in loving it! I've had a problem for years having many tabs open and getting overwhelmed, opening a new window and doing the exact same thing again. This extension is now heavily integrated into my workflow and I can't imagine going back to my old ways of "organizing" bookmarks. AND it works with org mode! Thank you so much!
  • (2022-02-02) Mattox Alan Beckman: I have been struggling with finding a good bookmark manager for a long time now. I've tried various options such as pinboard.in, maintaining my own set of links, and even delecio.us (remember them?). Two features that nobody seems to have at the same time: the ability to "live search" your bookmarks *quickly*, and having a local copy of your data in a readable format. Having used emacs for over 2^5 years, org-mode is a singly unifying aspect of how I organize my life, and the fact that this extension uses org-mode to store bookmarks makes this, um, a no-brainer for me. :)
  • (2022-02-01) 田中知美: ★A minimalist bookmark manager that sits between workna and tabXpert.★ This tool automatically formats the browser window and displays the tools on the edges. Bookmarks can be displayed on the todo list. There is one feature that makes this tool stand out from the rest. This tool has some features that make it stand out from the rest, such as the ability to restore tab groups and the ability to link the tool to the web page being viewed. Many other book managers create a new workspace in the tool every time you close a web page if the window is not linked. This tool, however, is safe. Any page registered with the tool will be stored in the specified location, no matter where the window is. In the future, if the tool is named brain, and if the bookmark function is implemented with a flowchart function like mindmap, I think it will become a unique extension tool. Thumbnails will be displayed for each web page so that you can quickly determine what sites are in which folder at a glance. This would make it an enhanced visual bookmark manager that goes beyond sitemaps, which are easier to understand than raindrop.io and more visible than visualsitemaps, and I would rate it a 10.
  • (2022-02-01) Samim Pezeshki: I used to have an org-mode file called "read-later.org". This file had headings each related to a topic. I used this file to track my list of things to read later. Now I have the exact same setup but using braintool it is magically connected to my browser! I can have the same file and structure and now control and modify while I am reading. Thanks for this great tool!

Latest issues

  • (2023-05-03, v:0.9.9) Jamie A: Extension won't load after update
    Just updated Chrome to Version 113.0.5672.64 (Official Build) (64-bit) ... now BrainTool extension won't load. It appears on the toolbar but when clicked is stuck at "Starting BrainTool..." and a window never opens.
  • (2022-12-09, v:0.9.9) Sven Agnew: Unchecked runtime.lastError: Invalid value for bounds. Bounds must be at least 50% within visible screen space.
    Braintool has stopped working, I am not entirely sure at which version of Chrome it stopped working. I am currently on Chrome 108.0.5359.98 (Official Build) (arm64) using OS macOS Version 11.7 (Build 20G817) Braintool v0.9.9 The subject is the error I receive when I inspect the Braintool pop-up (which never actually renders, because of the error). Any advice?
  • (2022-05-23, v:0.9.9) Антон Кононов: Is there an autosave feature?
    Cannot find this one anywhere. I want to tick some option and be sure all my currently open tabs are just saved somewhere (special group maybe). Later on i can organize them manually. Today it's not so clear when my open tab already saved or not so i have to dig extra time for that.
  • (2022-01-26, v:0.9.8) Macie Laudermilk: nccc
    kyra
  • (2021-08-24, v:0.9.6) Николай Килин: import Tabs Outliner --> EDGE not working
    import Tabs Outliner --> EDGE not working, please refund my money!!
  • (2021-08-22, v:0.9.6) Oshyan Greene: BrainTool now pops up alongside browser and breaks window size (maximized) of other window 😠
    BrainTool used to just be like a regular pop-up window. It would actually show up behind my browser window sometimes, which was a little annoying, but it didn't mess anything else up. Now, though, it pops up *alongside* my full browser window, which I tend to keep maximized, and it actually "breaks" the "maximized" setting of the other window it was invoked from! Furthermore, when the BrainTool window is closed, it does not revert back to maximized. While this may have been implemented to fix the "popup behind main window" issue, it is in my view far more annoying and is now intrusive. I can't find any setting to control this. Is there any way to adjust this new behavior so it stops trying to control my browser's min/max setting?
  • (2021-04-21, v:0.9.0) Ingo Dean: Tabs Outliner export/import
    What's the process for exporting your Tabs Outliner to create a .tree file to import into BrainTool?
  • (2021-01-13, v:0.6.2) Jack Xie: Stopped working
    it stopped working after today's update. stuck at "authenticating with google" it's on linux in case it matters.
  • (2020-12-29, v:0.5.4) Brian Ottinger: Move to or create a highest level tag
    Hi Tony, Very interesting extension and one I'm very interested in getting to work as I suffer from the many windows/huge number of tabs problem. I'm playing with your test hierarchy and cannot seem to figure out how to create a tag at the highest level or move things to the highest level. In your example, I moved the Project tab and got it stuck under Area. It's probably just something I'm missing, but how can I get it back to the top level? And how do I create a new top level tag?
  • (2020-12-06, v:0.5.3) Kevin Latendresse: Is there an import function
    This was described as an improved bookmark manager in ZDNet article, accessed on Google News. I do not see an evident import feature to say import my Chrome bookmarks. Am I misunderstanding the intent of BrainTool?
  • (2020-12-06, v:0.5.3) Shad D: Error loading
    An error has occurred Package is invalid. Details: 'Could not load icon 'images/BrainTool128.png' specified in 'icons'.'.
  • (2020-12-06, v:0.5.2) cap carnage: The same problem everyone else is having
    Can't get to the welcome page
  • (2020-12-05, v:0.5.2) Timothy Hamilton: 'Could not load icon 'images/BrainTool128.png' specified in 'browser_action'.'
    I get this error when trying to add to my chrome browser: Package is invalid. Details: 'Could not load icon 'images/BrainTool128.png' specified in 'browser_action'.'.
  • (2020-12-05, v:0.5.2) Robert Markowitz: Side Panel
    I've looked at your product and it looks interesting. However, I don't find anywhere in your documentation that tells me how to launch the side panel. All your examples have it already open. I tried both left and right clicking on the extension icon with no luck.
  • (2020-12-05, v:0.5.2) When W: cannot install
    An error has occurred Package is invalid. Details: 'Could not load extension icon 'images/BrainTool128.png'.'.
  • (2020-12-05, v:0.5.2) Fab P.: Cannot install extension - Error
    Hello, I would have loved to try your extension, but unfortunately I get this error when trying to add to my chrome browser: Package is invalid. Details: 'Could not load icon 'images/BrainTool128.png' specified in 'browser_action'.'.

Statistics

Installs
5,873 history
Category
Rating
4.8 (246 votes)
Last update / version
2022-04-07 / 0.9.9
Listing languages
ko en de fr es

Links