Close and reopen tabs on space change

Legacy workflow, SupaSidebar 1.3.0 and later. Previously named Link Open Tabs to Space. Existing settings are retained. Using 1.2.x?

Close and reopen tabs on space change remembers URLs for a space and attempts to reopen them when you return. It also closes unlocked tabs when you leave. Restore uses the saved browser/profile when it can identify and open that destination. Lock tabs that should stay open across spaces.

What does the legacy workflow do?

This is an opt-in advanced flow for remembering and restoring URLs. It works with both profile-linked and unlinked spaces, but it does not guarantee an isolated session for each named profile.

Closing scope: when leaving a linked space, the legacy close step can close unlocked tabs across its entire linked browser, including other profiles. When leaving an unlinked space, it can close unlocked tabs across the collected browsers. The named-profile Live Tabs filter does not limit this legacy close step.

How to turn it on

The master toggle lives in Preferences → Spaces → Switching spaces → Advanced → Close and reopen tabs on space change. The feature is off by default and requires Live Tabs. It changes how tabs behave across spaces and depends on browser timing for the close-and-reopen step.

When the master toggle is on, Remember all open tabs when leaving automatically records the outgoing space’s tabs for restoration. Turn it off if you want to choose which tabs each space remembers. Existing values from Auto-link tabs on leave are preserved.

Open linked browser if it isn’t running is an independent control in Switching spaces. It can launch a linked browser even when the legacy close-and-reopen workflow is off.

What happens on a space switch

A switch with the feature on runs the same five steps for both profile-linked and regular spaces:

1. Snapshot - If Remember all open tabs when leaving is on, capture the outgoing tab list using the legacy browser/profile matching and save the URLs that can be captured
2. Close - Close unlocked collected tabs, one at a time. For an outgoing linked space this is scoped to its browser, not guaranteed to its named profile
3. Switch - Update the sidebar to the new space
4. Launch - Apply the existing linked-browser activation and optional launch behavior
5. Restore - Try to reopen saved URLs that are not already open, using the saved profile when it can be resolved, then the saved browser or normal opening fallback

A small phase banner appears in the sidebar during the switch (“Closing 4 tabs…”, “Opening 6 linked tabs…”) with a shortcut to the legacy control in Preferences.

In SupaSidebar 1.3.1 and later, SupaSidebar waits for fresh tab data before saving or closing outgoing tabs. Incomplete reads are retried. If the required tab details remain unavailable, the operation stops with a message so incomplete data does not replace your saved tabs. Let the browser finish loading and try switching again. Your custom Live Tabs browser order is retained during the refresh.

While Close and reopen tabs on space change is on, switching may take longer while SupaSidebar saves, closes, and reopens tabs. Rapid switching requests are combined so the final target runs the close-and-reopen cycle. Turning this off removes that legacy cycle; browser activation or launching may still take time.

Locks: keep a tab open everywhere

Lock a tab to mark it as exempt from the auto-close step. Locked tabs stay open across every space switch, no matter which space owns them. This is what you want for a music player, a chat app, a long-running dashboard, or anything that should never disappear when you change context.

Locks are per-machine (they don’t sync) and live independently of the automatically remembered tab list. You can have a locked tab that isn’t auto-linked, and an auto-linked tab that isn’t locked.

To lock or unlock a tab, hover over the live tab row and use the lock icon, or use the right-click menu.

Manually linking a tab

If you turn Remember all open tabs when leaving off, the master toggle still tracks individually linked tabs. Hover over a live tab and use the link icon (or the right-click menu) to add or remove it from the current space’s linked set. Manually linked tabs use the same restore process. Choosing tabs manually does not narrow the browser-wide legacy close step; use locks to exclude tabs from closing.

Profile-aware restore

SupaSidebar saves a profile identifier when the legacy capture can identify one. During restore, it tries that profile if it is still available. Otherwise it opens in the saved browser, or falls back to normal link opening when that browser cannot be resolved.

For example, a saved Brave · Work identifier can target that profile on restore. If no usable profile identifier was saved, opening in Brave does not guarantee the Work profile. Restoring URLs also does not preserve unsaved page state, forms, or a complete browser session.

Why it’s off by default

Closing and reopening tabs across browsers via AppleScript is inherently fragile. AppleScript timing varies per tab, profile lock-files can contend at launch, and browser cold-start times are unpredictable. Beyond the fragility, the feature is also a workflow shift: a casual user expects their tabs to stay where they left them. The master toggle is gated behind the Advanced section so a regular Mac user never encounters this behavior accidentally.

If you do not want browser-wide tab closing, leave the master toggle off. Lock tabs you want excluded when using this workflow. Turning off Remember all open tabs when leaving changes what is remembered; it does not disable the close step.

When to use legacy tab memory vs. a linked browser

You can combine them, but a named-profile connection does not make legacy closing or restoring fully profile-isolated.

Tips

• Lock anything you do not want closed: music, chat, dashboards, in-progress forms.
• Pair this with a linked browser or profile when you want both browser identity and tab memory per space.
• Use the phase banner’s settings shortcut to reach the master toggle.
• See Live Tabs for the basics of what tabs SupaSidebar can see.