explaingit

ithung-str/browser-tab-search

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

0SwiftAudience · generalComplexity · 2/5LicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

A macOS menu bar app that lets you instantly search and jump to any open tab across every browser with one hotkey.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Searches all open tabs
      Jumps to matching tab
    Tech stack
      Swift
      AppleScript
    Use cases
      Find lost tabs fast
      Rescue live video calls
    Audience
      Mac power users

Code map

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Quickly find a tab you lost track of across Safari, Chrome, Firefox and other browsers.

USE CASE 2

Jump straight into a live video call buried among many open tabs.

USE CASE 3

Reduce time spent hunting for the right browser window when working with dozens of tabs open.

What is it built with?

SwiftSwiftUIAppleScript

How does it compare?

ithung-str/browser-tab-searchaiduckman/claudeusage_latest_may2026arnabau/thermalpulse
Stars000
LanguageSwiftSwiftSwift
Setup difficultyeasyeasymoderate
Complexity2/52/53/5
Audiencegeneralvibe coderdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

App is not notarized, so macOS requires a one time manual approval in System Settings before it will open.

MIT license: free to use, copy, modify and distribute, including commercially, as long as the copyright notice stays.

In plain English

Browser Tab Search is a small Mac app that helps you find an open browser tab quickly when you have too many open across different browsers. Pressing a keyboard shortcut opens a search box, similar to macOS Spotlight, where typing a few letters brings up matching tabs from Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Firefox, and the Dia browser, plus video call windows from Teams, Zoom, and FaceTime. Pressing enter jumps straight to the matching tab and brings its window to the front. One feature the author highlights is finding a live video call buried among many browser tabs. If you are on an active call in Meet, Teams, Zoom, or Webex, that tab is pinned to the top of the results with a marker showing it is live, and the app can tell if your microphone is actually active. Search matches both the tab title and its web address, ignores accents, and does not care about word order, so typing two words in either order still finds the right tab. Duplicate tabs are grouped into a single row with a count badge, and tabs you jump to often are shown first when the search box is empty. Under the hood, each browser is handled through a shared interface. Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, and Dia are read using AppleScript, since they support Apple's scripting tools. Firefox does not, so the app instead reads Firefox's own saved session file directly, which can lag a little behind live changes. The app lives only in the menu bar, with no icon in the Dock, and closes as soon as it loses focus or you press Escape. It requires a fairly recent version of Xcode to build from source, and since it is not officially notarized by Apple, first time users need to manually allow it to run in system settings. It is released under the MIT license.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I build this app from source using Xcode?
Prompt 2
Explain how Firefox tab detection differs from Safari and Chrome in this project.
Prompt 3
What permissions does macOS need me to grant for this app to work?

Frequently asked questions

What is browser-tab-search?

A macOS menu bar app that lets you instantly search and jump to any open tab across every browser with one hotkey.

What language is browser-tab-search written in?

Mainly Swift. The stack also includes Swift, SwiftUI, AppleScript.

What license does browser-tab-search use?

MIT license: free to use, copy, modify and distribute, including commercially, as long as the copyright notice stays.

How hard is browser-tab-search to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.

Who is browser-tab-search for?

Mainly general.

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