The problem with a saved session
You save your project’s window on Monday: twelve tabs, two groups, the brief pinned at the front. By Wednesday the window has eighteen tabs, one group has been renamed, and three of the twelve are closed. The saved session still says Monday. Restore it next week and you get Monday back, which is not where you left off.
The usual fix is to remember to press Update. Nobody remembers to press Update. So the session you trusted is a snapshot of a day you have forgotten, and the work since then lives only in the open window.
A Live Session is the other way round. The session follows the window or tab group it was saved from, and re-saves itself as that window changes. You keep working; the saved copy keeps up.
What a Live Session is
In Nest, a free tab manager for Chrome, a saved Session keeps its windows, Chrome tab groups, tab order and pinned tabs. A Session saved from one window or one tab group can be made Live. It then follows that window or group on this computer:
- A tab opened, closed, moved, pinned or unpinned in the window is written to the Session.
- A tab whose address or title changes is written too, so a page you navigated is saved where you ended up.
- A group created, renamed or recoloured inside a followed window is kept with the tabs.
- A followed tab group is tracked by its own tabs: add one and the Session gains it, drag one out and the Session loses it.
Nest waits ten seconds after the last change before writing, and writes at least once a minute while changes keep coming, so a burst of opening and closing becomes one save rather than twenty. Only a change in the content triggers a write; scrolling, switching tabs and reading do not.
Live Sessions are a Pro feature. Everything about saving, restoring and organizing Sessions stays free, including three named Sessions and any number of imported ones.
Turning it on
- Open Nest and go to Backup. Saved Sessions is at the top.
- Save the window with Save this window, or a group with Save this group. Give it a name by clicking the name on its card if you like.
- On the card, open the ⋯ menu and switch on Keep up to date.
The card gains a Live tag and a status line: “Live · following this window” while the window is open here, or “Live · updates when it is open” while it is not. There is nothing else to set. Switch it off from the same menu at any time; the Session keeps its last contents and becomes an ordinary saved Session.
What it never does
A Live Session only writes to its own saved copy. It never opens a tab, never closes one, and never touches a tab on another computer. That is a rule, not a default: the point of a Session is to have a way back, and a feature that edited your open window would be the opposite of that.
A few more things it will not do, so there are no surprises:
- It does not follow an “All windows” Session. Only a Session saved from one window or one tab group can be Live.
- It does not guess. The link between a Session and its window is made when you save, when you restore the Session whole into new windows, or when you turn Keep up to date on with the group open. If a window merely looks like the Session, nothing follows it.
- It does not follow on your other computers. The Session syncs with Pro, but the link to a window is local. On another computer the Session is a saved copy until you restore it there.
- It stops when the window closes. Close the window and the link ends; the Session holds what it had. If you close a window by accident, an Automatic Session has it too.
Restarts, renamed groups and other edge cases
Chrome restarts clear the links. A followed window comes back as an ordinary window; restore the Session whole and the new window is followed again. A followed tab group with a title finds its way back on its own: when Chrome reopens the group with the same name and colour, and it is the only such group, the Session follows it again. An untitled group cannot be told apart from another of the same colour, so it waits until you restore it or turn Keep up to date on again.
Renaming or recolouring a followed group ends its link. Nest will not quietly decide that “Research, blue” is now “Reading, blue”. Turn Keep up to date on again and it follows the renamed group.
If you sign out of Pro, the card reads “Live · paused” and the Session stops following until you sign in again. Nothing is deleted.
Live Sessions with Session history
Pro also keeps Session history: thirty days of earlier versions of each saved Session. A Live Session writes versions as it goes, at most one an hour, then one a day once a version is a day old. Open History… on the card to see them, and restore any version as a new Session, or replace the current one. So a Live Session gives you both: the window as it is now, and the window as it was on Monday.
A Scheduled Session is aware of a Live one, too. If a Session is scheduled to open at nine and it is already open here as a Live Session, Nest brings that window to the front instead of opening a second copy.
When to use it
- A project window you return to for weeks: make it Live once and stop thinking about it.
- A tab group you keep tidy by hand, such as “Clients” or “Reading”: a Live group Session is the group’s backup.
- A window you hand to another computer: keep it Live here, restore it there, and update from whichever side you worked on.
For a set of tabs that should look the same every time you open it, a plain saved Session is the right tool; nothing you do in the restored window changes the saved copy. Live is for the window that is still changing.
Save the project once. Let it follow you.
Three named Sessions free, with their windows, tab groups and pinned tabs. Pro makes Sessions unlimited and adds Keep up to date, so a Session re-saves itself as you work.