Browser tabs

Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Arc, Brave, and Edge can open a list of web pages when the layout launches. In the Work context section, their row reads Add tabs until you add one, then shows the number of tabs and their sites.

Edit the tabs

Click the browser’s row. The dialog shows your pages the way a browser window would, as tabs above an address bar:

• Type an address in the address bar to set the selected tab.
• Click + to add a tab.
• Drag a tab to change the order. You can also right-click a tab and choose Move left or Move right.
• Click the × on a tab, or right-click it and choose Close tab, to remove it. Closing the last tab leaves an empty one, as in a browser.
• Paste several addresses, one per line, to create a tab for each, starting at the selected tab.
• Drop a link on the window to add it as a tab.

Press ⌘Return or click Save to keep your tabs. Return on its own completes the address you’re typing.

Addresses

Like a browser’s address bar, the dialog completes what you type:

You type	Layout saves
github.com	https://github.com
localhost:3000	http://localhost:3000

Local addresses (localhost, names ending in .localhost, 127.0.0.1, and 0.0.0.0) get http://; everything else gets https://.

Each tab must be a complete http:// or https:// address with a host name, without a user name or password. The dialog marks an invalid address and won’t save until you fix it: “Use a complete web address, like github.com or http://localhost:3000.”

A local page reminds you that “Layout never starts a server: this one must already be running.”

Tab icons

Layout doesn’t download favicons. Each tab shows the site’s initial on a color picked from its domain, so a site always looks the same. Local servers show a laptop icon. No network request is made.

What happens at launch

1. If the window Layout opened for these tabs is still open, Layout uses it again and opens nothing new, even after you quit and reopen Layout.
2. Otherwise, if a window of the browser already shows every one of your tabs, Layout uses that window.
3. Otherwise, Layout hands your pages to the browser:
   • Firefox opens them in a new window of your current profile, as separate tabs, left to right in the order you set. Layout never starts a separate Firefox profile.
   • The other browsers decide themselves where the pages open and in which order. Each launch can add tabs to a window that’s already open.

Then Layout places a browser window in the browser’s zone.

Layout recognizes the window it opened by the number macOS gives it, which lasts until the window closes or the browser quits. A window the browser restores when it starts again is new to Layout. The window also stops counting once you change the tabs, though putting them in another order isn’t a change. Layout doesn’t check which tabs the window still has: if you closed some, it uses the window as it is.

To check whether a window already shows your tabs, Layout reads the addresses the browser reports for its windows and tabs. It doesn’t read the content of the pages. Firefox normally reports none, so Layout only finds a Firefox window it opened itself.