Save a session

Saving a session is the foundation of everything else in TabControl. A saved session is a full snapshot of your Safari browsing context — every window, every tab, and the small details that make the difference between a restored session that feels identical and one that feels “close but not quite.”

TabControl offers two save actions. They capture the same data; the only difference is what happens to your current windows afterward.

Captures every open window and tab into a new session. Nothing closes. Your Safari windows keep running exactly as they were.

Use this when you want a bookmark of “this is where I am right now” without interrupting your work.

Captures the same data, then closes the captured windows. Safari quits to whatever’s left (typically your start page).

Use this at the end of a project, a workday, or a research sprint — when you want the tabs out of the way but still retrievable.

TabControl stores a structured snapshot of your browsing context:

• A name (you can rename it later).
• A capture timestamp.
• A tab count and window count.
• A lock flag (off by default — see below).
• A category and optional tags, if you assign them.

• Whether the window was focused (will reopen as the frontmost window when restored).
• Whether it was a private browsing window.

• Title and URL.
• Pinned status (pinned tabs restore as pinned).
• Active status (the active tab in each window is remembered).
• Muted status.
• Discarded status — whether Safari had already suspended the tab at capture time. Restored sessions preserve this, so a session with 300 tabs doesn’t all load at once.
• The tab’s position in the window.

Right-click (or long-press) a session in the list and choose Rename. You can rename freely — renames stay local and sync through iCloud like any other change.

If you didn’t give a session a name when you saved it, TabControl assigns a default like Session — Apr 24, 2026 · 3:42 PM.

Locking a session prevents it from being deleted by mistake. You can still rename, restore, or add tags to a locked session, but the delete action is disabled until you unlock it.

To lock: right-click a session → Lock. The session gets a small lock badge.

Locking doesn’t affect anything else — no special cloud behavior, no extra encryption, no retention override. It’s just an undo-proofing for your most important snapshots.

TabControl deliberately doesn’t touch a few things:

• Form data and scroll position. Safari doesn’t expose these to extensions. Restoring a session reloads each tab from scratch, so any unsaved form state is lost.
• Private browsing tabs are captured by metadata but aren’t restored as private — Safari’s extension API forbids it. TabControl flags private-window sessions in the UI so you know.
• Cookies, local storage, or login state. These belong to Safari, not TabControl. Restoring a session doesn’t re-log-you-in; it just reopens the URLs.
• Page content. Only titles and URLs. TabControl has no access to, and no record of, what’s on the pages themselves.

Sessions live in an SQLite database inside TabControl’s App Group container (group.com.marsolab.TabControl). It’s a single file per user account, stored under your Library folder, managed by the TabControl app.

If iCloud sync is on, a mirrored copy of each session’s metadata lives in your private CloudKit database. Private CloudKit data is encrypted in transit and on Apple’s servers, and isn’t visible to anyone but you.

• Restore a session — get tabs back, with or without closing what you have open.
• Organize with categories — sort sessions by project, context, or workflow.