How to Sync Tabs between Different Browsers

Many web browsers allow you to sync tabs between devices. For example, Chrome on the desktop syncs with Chrome on your phone, etc. But what about syncing between different browsers? That’s a little harder to do, but it’s not impossible.

Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge all support syncing tabs across devices in their own way. However, that’s not helpful if you use Firefox at work and Chrome at home. They can’t talk to each other.

RELATED: How to Sync Microsoft Edge Tabs Across Devices

“Tab Session Manager” is an open-source extension that works with Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. It allows you to sync open tabs and windows between these different browsers. We’ll show you how it works.

First, you’ll need to download the extension for Chrome, Edge, or Firefox. Install it on all the browsers you want to sync together. The setup process is going to be the same on every browser.

Once the Tab Session Manager has been installed, open it from the extensions menu in your browser.

The Tab Session Manager window will open. Click the gear icon to begin setting it up.

There’s a lot happening on the Settings page, but we’re not going to be messing with all of it. First, give the device a name and check the “Save Device Name to Session” box. This will help identify where the tabs are from.

Next, make sure that “Save the Session Regularly” is checked. You can adjust how frequently you want the tabs to be synced and how many sessions will be stored at a time.

You can also set it so that the tabs are synced when you close a window or exit the browser. How much you have things synced is up to you.

The key ingredient to making this work between different browsers is cloud sync. By signing in with your Google account, you allow sessions to be backed up to your Google Drive and made available on other browsers.

Click “Sign in with Google” to proceed.

A message will inform you that Tab Session Manager is requesting permissions. Using this feature does require you to make some privacy sacrifices. Click “Allow” if you are fine with that.

Google’s account sign-in window will open. Select your Google account and proceed to enter your credentials.

During sign-in, you’ll be asked to grant Tab Session Manager permission to view and manage the data it creates in your Google Drive. Click “Allow.”

That’s all you need to do to set up tab syncing. Repeat these steps in every browser where you want to access the tabs.

To use Tab Session Manager, simply click the extension icon from the browser toolbar. You may need to click the sync button on the first launch.

Since we named each browser, you can easily see where the tabs are from. The title of each session is the active tab. Click a session to see all of the tabs to the right.

That’s all there is to it. You may occasionally need to click the sync button to force an update, and it will ask you to sign back in to Google after a while. This may not be as simple as a built-in method, but it works if you use multiple browsers.