What Is New in Nest: Sessions Keep Your Tab Groups, Import From OneTab, Live and Scheduled Sessions

Sessions keep their structure

Choose what to save: this Chrome tab group, this window, or all your windows. Nest records each window, the position of every tab, which tabs are pinned, and each tab group with its title and colour. Restore opens new windows with the same layout, recreates the groups, pins what was pinned, and puts the same tab in front.

• Restore some of it: Choose… shows the session’s tabs and lets you pick the ones you want, into new windows or into the window you are in.
• Save and close: tick “Close after saving” and Nest saves the session, then closes exactly those tabs and nothing else.
• Rename and search: click a session’s name to rename it; one search box covers saved sessions and the ones Autopilot saved for you.
• Shortcuts: save the current window, save the current tab group, or open session search from the keyboard. The defaults are listed under chrome://extensions/shortcuts, where you can change them.
• Large restores stay light: above ten tabs, every page loads once and is then suspended except each window’s front tab, so the tab strip is complete but the browser is not doing all the work at once.

The free plan keeps up to three named sessions; Pro makes them unlimited and syncs them to your other computers. A session saved before this update still opens, and an older Nest on the same Pro account still reads a new session as a flat list.

Import from OneTab, Session Buddy and more

If your saved tabs live in another tool, you no longer have to retype them. Nest reads the files these tools export:

• OneTab — the “Export URLs” text and OneTab 2’s HTML file
• Session Buddy — version 4 export (JSON or CSV) and version 3 or 4 backups
• Tab Session Manager — its JSON export, including tab groups with titles and colours
• TabGroup Vault — JSON, Markdown and CSV exports
• A Chrome bookmarks file — the HTML Chrome’s bookmark manager exports
• A Nest export — so a session you exported from one computer imports on another

Press Import in the Backup view, choose the file, and read the preview before anything is written. The preview lists each session the file holds with its tab, window and group counts, and says plainly what the file cannot carry: Session Buddy files have no group names or colours, OneTab files have no windows. Untick what you do not want, then import.

Imported sessions do not use up your three free sessions. Updating an imported session from the tabs open now makes it your own, within the allowance; renaming it does not.

Export in four formats

Export now writes JSON, HTML, Markdown or CSV, free. Tick “Include saved sessions” to add them to the open tabs. The JSON file keeps each session’s windows and groups, so it round-trips into Nest with its structure; the HTML file is a page of clickable links that opens anywhere; Markdown and CSV are for notes and spreadsheets. A single session can also be exported on its own from its card.

Live Sessions (Pro)

A Live Session is a window or tab-group session with “Keep up to date” turned on. Nest then re-saves it as you add, move, rename and close tabs, about ten seconds after you stop changing things, so you do not have to save it by hand. It never opens or closes a tab by itself; it only writes the session.

Turn it on from the card’s menu. The card shows “Live · following this window” while the window is open here. On a second computer the same session is just a session until you turn Live on there. One known limit: a change made in the last few seconds before Chrome itself quits may not be written; Autopilot’s restart rescue and Chrome’s own restore are the way back.

Scheduled Sessions

Choose Schedule… on a session card, pick the weekdays and a time, and Nest opens that session then, on that device. If the session is already open as a Live Session, Nest brings its window to the front instead of opening a second copy. If Chrome was not running at the time, Nest does not open it late without asking: a notification offers to open it the same day.

The free plan schedules one session; Pro schedules as many as you like.

Six languages

The interface is now available in English, German, Spanish, French, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese, following your browser’s language. The Chrome Web Store listing is in all six as well.

Also in this update

• Autopilot’s weekly summary mentions sessions you have not opened in 30 days, so a forgotten one does not stay forgotten.
• Autopilot’s automatic saves now offer Choose tabs…, the same picker a saved session has.
• Nothing changed in the permissions. The update asks for nothing new.

How to get it

1. Chrome updates extensions on its own; to hurry it, open chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode and press Update.
2. Open Nest and go to Backup. The session form shows the new “What to save” choices, and Import sits next to Export.
3. If you are coming from another tab manager, export from it first, then Import here.

Pro is $4 a month or $36 a year, with a seven-day trial on the monthly plan and no card needed. Autopilot, import and export stay free.