Search all Tabs A powerful content indexing tool to search all tabs and their frames
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The "Search all Tabs" adds the capabilities of search engines to your browser. Once you open the extension popup, it will start creating a database by indexing all the tabs and frame elements that are currently open. This indexing process typically takes about one second for a moderate number of tabs (around 30). You can view the number of indexed documents on the user interface, and start searching for your query immediately after opening the popup. After the indexing process completes, the extension automatically executes your search query and presents the relevant results in order of their relevance weight. Clicking on each search result focuses on the corresponding tab and highlights the relevant content for easier tracking. You can use most of the search operators in your query. For more information, please refer to the related FAQ. Note that this extension does not interact with any servers, as all indexing and searching activities are local to your computer and get erased from memory when you close the popup.

Features

FAQs

  1. What is the "Search all Tabs" add-on and how can I use it?

    After installation, the extension adds a toolbar button to your browser, which you can use to open the popup window and search for content in your existing tabs. The extension uses indexing to locate the most relevant content that matches your query. It supports most search operators, such as "OR" and "AND" operators, just like any other search engine.

    When you open the popup window, the extension injects a small JavaScript code into all open tabs to retrieve their text-based content and pass it to the indexing engine. At this point, the extension is ready to execute your search queries against its internal database. The matched results are displayed in the popup window with a preview and a link to the actual content. The extension appends the tab's favicon to the entry, and it highlights the matching words in the snippet. If you find what you are looking for, you can click on the title, and the extension will focus on the relevant tab, with the selected content displayed. You can also use the number next to each entry to activate the corresponding tab without using your mouse.

    This extension uses two indexing engines: a CPP library called Xapian (converted to pure JavaScript) and a pure JavaScript library called lunrjs. These are powerful indexing engines that can handle really large databases, and they are likely the same search engines used by your native tools as well.

  2. What's new in this version?

    Please check the Logs section.

  3. Why does the extension require indexing each time the popup gets opened?

    The extension re-indexes all tabs every time the popup is opened to protect user privacy. The searching script gets unloaded when the popup is closed. Additionally, the indexed database is only stored in your browser's memory and is automatically deleted when the popup window is closed to free up memory. Since the indexing process is fast, there's no need to save the file for future use. The engine used by this extension is capable of indexing large databases efficiently.

  4. What does the "Search Engine" option in the toolbar button's right-click context menu do?

    This extension offers two different engines for searching content starting from version 0.2.2. The default engine is "Xapian," a widely-used C library for content indexing and searching. This extension uses a custom JavaScript-compiled version of this library. Additionally, this extension supports "lunrjs," a pure JavaScript-based content indexing engine. By changing the search engine option from the right-click context menu, you can compare the performance of each engine by reopening the popup view. Since the extension re-indexes each time the popup window is opened, it will use your newly selected engine. If you need to find partial matches, keep in mind that the "Xapian" library only supports right truncation (e.g., Xap*), whereas "lunrjs" supports wildcards at any position. The "Xapian" engine is a better choice when dealing with multilingual content.

  5. Is it possible to search local text files with this extension?

    This extension's indexing engine works only with browser tabs. However, if you don't have any other tools that support search operators and keywords, you can still use your browser to search local files. To do so, drag the files into your browser window to open them as browser tabs to allow the extension to read their contents. Note that if you are using a Chromium browser, you need to grant the extension access to local files in the extension manager (file://). Once the files are open as browser tabs and the extension has the necessary permissions, you can open the popup and search within these local files. To limit your search results to local files, simply append URL:file:// to your search query.

  6. Can I use specific keywords to refine my search results?

    This extension supports several keywords to refine your search results. To use a keyword, append it to your query in the format keyword:query. List of supported keywords: * hostname: the hostname of the document that got indexed (e.g. www.google.com for https://www.google.com) * title: the title of the web page or the title of the document element. If a frame provides its own title, that title gets used instead of the parent's title. * mime: the mime type of the document. For web pages it is text/html. * url: URL of the document. For frames, the URL is invisible to the user, but the extension indexes them too. * date: the last modified date of the document in YYYYMMDD format. * filename: is equal to location.pathname of each URL. * language: the page's language tag. If no tag is provided, "english" is used. See the list of supported languages in the relevant FAQ. To match a particular language use language:english for instance. * keyword: the comma-separated list of keywords that are placed in the meta tag of the document. * description: the meta description tag of the document For instance to search for a book in a google.com tab that contains "physics" keyword in the meta description use: url:google AND keyword:physics. You can use url:google OR keyword:physics to extend your search results to tabs with google in their URL and or "physics" in their meta description.

  7. What are the supported languages?

    At this point the extension supports language parsing for "arabic", "armenian", "basque", "catalan", "danish", "dutch", "earlyenglish", "english", "finnish", "french", "german", "german2", "hungarian", "indonesian", "irish", "italian", "kraaij_pohlmann", "lithuanian", "lovins", "nepali", "norwegian", "porter", "portuguese", "romanian", "russian", "spanish", "swedish", "tamil", "turkish".

    Note that upon searching a new query, the extension detects the most possible input language of the query and uses that language to parse the query

  8. What causes the number of documents displayed in the extension's popup to exceed the number of open tabs in my browser?

    Every frame element on a page is considered a unique document with its URL and metadata. Since iframes are commonly used within web pages, the total number of documents is typically higher than the number of tabs currently open in your browser.

  9. What is the initial query when the popup is opened?

    For user convenience, the extension automatically searches for selected text on the current page and uses it as the initial query when the popup is opened. If this is not your preference, use the right-click context menu to alter or remove this feature.

  10. What does the number on the right side of each search entry mean?

    The number on the right side of each search entry indicates the percentage of how well the search entry matches the user's query. If the number is 100%, it means the query and the search result have a perfect match.

  11. [lunr engine] What are the searching operators that I can use?

    As of version 0.2.2, this extension uses lunrjs by default instead of xapian. This library is a pure JS library to provide great search experience without the need for server-side search services. This library supports the following operators:

    • WILDCARDS: wildcard is represented as an asterisk (*) and can appear anywhere in a search term. Example: foo*, *oo, or f*o
    • FIELDS: By default, this extension will search all fields in a document for the query term, and it is possible to restrict a term to a specific field. Examples: title:foo, or title:foo* bar
    • BOOSTS: In searches with multiple terms, a single term may be more important than others. Any document that matches a boosted term will get a higher relevance score, and appear higher up in the results. A boost is applied by appending a caret (^) and then a positive integer to a term. Example: foo^10 bar
    • FUZZY MATCHES: This extension supports fuzzy matching search terms in documents, which can be helpful if the spelling of a term is unclear, or to increase the number of search results that are returned. The amount of fuzziness to allow when searching can also be controlled. Fuzziness is applied by appending a tilde (~) and then a positive integer to a term. The following search matches all documents that have a word within 1 edit distance. Examples: foo~1
    • TERM PRESENCE: By default this extension combines multiple terms together in a search with a logical OR. To indicate that a term must be present in matching documents the term should be prefixed with a plus (+) and to indicate that a term must be absent the term should be prefixed with a minus (-). Example: +foo bar -baz

  12. [xapian engine] What are the searching operators that I can use?

    As of version 0.2.2, this extension uses "lunrjs" by default. If you prefer the more pwerful "xapian" engine, use the right-click over the browser action button to change the engine to "xapian".

    • AND and NOT: will return results that contain both 'term1' and 'term2'.
    • XOR (exclusive OR): will return results that contain either 'term1' or 'term2', but not both.
    • OR: will return results that contain either 'term1' or 'term2'.
    • Brackets: Change search ordering like term1 AND (term2 OR term3)
    • NEAR: will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2.
    • ADJ: will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the same order as in the query
    • Phrases: According to the Xapian documentation a phrase surrounded with double quotes (like this: "my phrase") will return results that match everything containing "that exact phrase"

    Note that you can combine search operators with keywords too.

  13. After opening the popup window, the extension automatically searches a query. What is this string, and how can I disable this feature?

    When the popup window is opened, the extension automatically searches for any selected text in the active tab. If there is no selected text, the extension will use the last search query that was used. If you prefer to disable this feature, you can change the settings using the right-click context menu on the toolbar button.

  14. How does this extension handle discarded tabs, and can it still search their content?

    When a tab is discarded by a third-party extension like "The Great Suspender" or "Auto Tab Discard," the content of the tab is not accessible to this extension. Therefore, the extension only indexes the title and URL of the discarded tab. For other tabs, the content of each frame element is also indexed. As there is no matching content for the discarded tabs, scrolling to the matching snippet is not possible when the tab is focused.

  15. Why do I sometimes see a single page listed more than once in the result section?

    The extension indexes all frame elements on a page and divides the content of each frame into smaller sections. If a frame element has multiple parts that match the query, the results will show multiple entries with the same URL pointing to different sections. When selecting each result, the extension will highlight the matching section on the page.

  16. Can I group the matched results in a new window?

    Starting from version 0.1.7, you can group all tabs that match your search query into a new window by pressing Shift + Enter keys in the search box. This feature is particularly useful when you have a large number of open tabs and need to quickly access all the relevant tabs without navigating through them one by one.

  17. How can I limit the search scope to tab titles when using this extension?

    There are two ways to limit the search scope to tab titles only. First, you can prepend the "title:" keyword to your search query. Another way is to right-click the browser action button and select the "Index titles only" option, which was introduced in version 0.2.0. It's important to remember to remove this limitation if you need to search for something within the page's body.

  18. Can I trigger the reindexing of tabs in the Firefox sidebar without reopening it?

    To force the reindexing of tabs in the Firefox sidebar without closing it, you can reload the extension's interface using the shortcut key combination of Ctrl + R or Command + R if you're using a Mac. This will refresh the extension's interface and ensure the indexing is up-to-date with the new changes.

  19. How can I search within PDF files using this extension?

    While PDF files are typically protected, this extension can use the "PDF.js" library to parse PDF files and include the results in the indexing. This process is slower because the extension must fetch the PDF binary from the internet. If you want to disable this feature, use the right-click context menu item. The option to disable this feature is available as of version 0.2.4.

  20. Is it possible to see a preview of all matching paragraphs for a specific tab using this extension?

    This extension's primary function is to find all tabs that match your search query and sort them by relevance. For a preview of the matched words within a specific tab, it is recommended to use the Multiple Search and Highlight extension. Alternatively, from version 0.2.6, this extension offers a "+" button next to each result to allow deep searching of a single frame element by splitting its text into smaller segments. This way, you can see the snippets for different segments of a single tab.

  21. Can I adjust the snippet size that is shown for each search result?

    Right-click on the browser's action button and find Options -> Snippet Size -> #n words

  22. Can I adjust the number of results that are returned when I search for a query?

    Right-click on the browser's action button and find Options -> Search Size -> #n results

  23. Can I limit this extension to only search tabs in the current window?

    To limit the indexing to the current window, right-click the extension's action button and select "Search Crawler" from the menu. Then, select "Only index current window" as the indexing type. It's important to note that limiting the number of tabs to the index can improve indexing performance.

  24. Can the initial search speed of this extension be improved? Why does it sometimes take a few seconds to perform the initial search?

    The extension does not rely on a database, so when you open the popup, it indexes all your browser tabs. This process can sometimes take a few seconds, especially if you have a PDF tab since the extension needs to fetch the content from the internet. However, as of version 0.4.5, the extension waits up to 10 seconds for the content to be collected. To improve performance, you can use the right-click context menu to disable the indexing of PDF documents or reduce the "Wait for Indexing" timeout.

  25. Keyboard Shortcuts:

    • Enter: Open the active search result and close this window
    • Shift + Enter: Group all search results in a new window
    • Shift + Ctrl + Enter or Shift + Command + Enter: Group all highly matched search results (with green color ranking) in a new window
    • Arrow Up: Move to the previous search result
    • Arrow Down: Move to the next search result
    • Page Up: Move to the first search result
    • Page Down: Move to the last search result
    • Ctrl + F or Command + F: Focus the search box
    • Ctrl + # or Command + #: Open the search with # index and close this window
    • Escape: Clear the search box. If the search box is empty, close the popup view
    • Ctrl + D or Command + D: Copy all links to the clipboard
    • Shift + Space: Append or remove a search result to the selection list
    • Ctrl + Shift + A or Command + Shift + A: Append all results to the selection list
    • Ctrl + Shift + N or Command + Shift + N: Remove all results from the selection list
    • Ctrl + Shift + F or Command + Shift + F: Open FAQs page
    • Ctrl + Shift + S or Command + Shift + S: Open list of shortcuts
    • Ctrl + Shift + C or Command + Shift + C: Close selected tabs
    • Ctrl + Shift + G or Command + Shift + G: Group selected tabs

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    Editorial Review

    Finding information on all the tabs in a browser cannot only be time-consuming but also tiring and demanding. If you are looking for specific information, then reading or going through the whole text will be challenging and quite boring. In order to find what you are looking for quickly, you will need a search tool. Though the “Control + F” shortcut will help you find the information, but only on the current tab. The best time-saving solution is a suitable browser add-on, Search All Tabs. This is a wonderful and great searching tool and offline indexing. It will enable you to find content on all the tabs and show the relevant ones. Moreover, this extension is simple and straightforward to use. Here is everything you need to know about this extension.

    When it comes to using it, all you have to do it install it on your browser and add it to your toolbar. By clicking on the search icon on the toolbar, you can open a popup where you can enter your query. This extension will use indexing technique to find look for the information that matches your query. Just like many search engines, the extension uses operators, such as “AND” and “OR”. After the popup is opened, this extension will insert a JS code in all the opened tabs to look for all the text-based contents. The search tool will be ready to conduct a search on its database. Whenever the result of the matching content will be displayed, it will be in a popup with the preview and a link of the content. For making it easy for the user to differentiate between the entries, the favicon is added. This extension will even highlight the words of your query. By clicking on the link in the popup, you can visit the relevant tab. There is a % mentioned in front of the link. This indicates the match of the user’s query with the search result. Additionally, the content that is visible in the snippet will be selected. This extension uses Xapain as indexer script. It is a great indexing engine that performs searching and indexing functions. A great feature of this extension is that it works offline. The indexing will be stored in the browser memory. No matter what happens, there is no server interaction. The extension will not start indexing until the popup is not open. It will not store anything as the memory allocation is temporary. Moreover, you can use this extension to find relevant information from local files as well. For doing this, you need to open the file in your browser. You can do it by dragging the file to your browser. This action requires you to allow access to your files in the extension manager. Once, the permission is granted, you can search the files. This extension supports different languages. Therefore, this Search All Tabs extension will help in enhancing the search experience and will enable you to find content quickly and easily.

    Permissions are explained

    PermissionDescription
    <all_urls>to retrieve the content of browser tabs when indexing is required (on user action only); you can even use the extension to index local files (file://)
    tabsto inject indexing script to all your tabs and all their frame elements

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