This past week, we talked about how wonderful Wunderlist is.
In the comments section, I mentioned how I wish Wunderlist would auto-start on boot-up. Brian Alexander recommended that I:
Make it a pinned tab in Chrome. Have your tabs load from previous session when you close Chrome. Done!
What? A “pinned tab”? What the heck is that?
Like the tech savvy person that I am, I gave up on figuring out “pinned” tabs after about 40-seconds of no success.
Shame. On. Me.
Yesterday, Nathan Smith tweeted:
At this point, I had heard enough.
This time I didn’t give up, but only because I was able to figure it out in under 40-seconds.
I right-clicked the tab, and I pinned my first tab! Now, I was winning.
So, I jumped on the Google Chrome Web Store and picked-up Wunderlist (and few favorites of mine), fired-them up, and pinned them. There are a few other tabs I like to keep open all the time, so I pinned those, too!
Pinned tabs are Winning!
You can’t close them, they use less tab space, and they’re always ready.
I just combined the Gmail Google Labs favicon option, and I am really impressed with how slick this is.
So, if you’re a Chrome user, play around with the “Pin tab” option. It works with both regular web pages, along with all of the Chrome apps.
Happy pinning!
Brian Alexander says
Eric, thanks for featuring me this post. I use pinned tabs daily, and especially Wunderlist.
Eric Dye says
You are awesome.
Thanks for your ProTip!
Kyle Reed says
that is cool.
Thanks for sharing
Eric Dye says
🙂
Calvin Koepke says
Pinned tabs are awesome! Did you know that Firefox 4 also supports pinned tabs? The only issue is that if you have a lot of them open, Firefox becomes a memory-guzzling monster. I once had a Firefox-process using a GIG of RAM! Sheesh.
I think I’ll try Chrome and see if it has better memory management, but if it doesn’t, they need to figure something out.
Eric Dye says
This is great! Thanks for lettings us know that FF does it, too! (Where have I been?)
Calvin Koepke says
Ha, well actually, I didn’t even know Firefox came out with a version 4 until a few weeks late. #sad
Either way though, Chrome has an excellent advantage over Firefox in that it comes with hardware acceleration, and Firefox doesn’t. With that in mind, it might manage memory better.
Have you had any issues with Chrome hogging memory when you have six or seven tabs pinned?
Eric Dye says
I haven’t (that I’ve noticed). Then again, I’m running a decent amount of RAM. It looks like Chrome runs each tab individually, instead of clumped together. So, it may depend on what app or tab you’re pinning. Give it a go, monitor your resources if you have hiccups.
In fact, if you keep notes and grab screens, that would make a great guest post for us! 🙂
Calvin Koepke says
Sounds like a plan 🙂
Eric Dye says
eric [at] churchm.ag when you’ve got it together.
Calvin Koepke says
Cool. Jut so you know it might be a week or two cause I got little time in my life right now 😉 But I’ll let you know!
Eric Dye says
Cool. You’re awesome.
John Lane says
I love pinned tabs. First thing I do in the morning is create a pin tabbed for gmail, google calendar, basecamp, and pandora. Once those are open, I’m ready to work!
Eric Dye says
If you look under your Chrome options, and select “Reopen the pages that were open last”, your pinned tabs will automatically load every time you open Chrome.
Graham says
I use this feature all the time for my Google inbox, calendar and apps. I keep three separate Google inboxes open at all times. Google now allows you to log in to multiple accounts (3 total) per browser session.
Eric Dye says
As do I! I use two Google accounts, not as fancy as you I guess. Loving the pinned tabs. FTW!
Graham says
1. Work
2. Blog/Freelance
3. Personal
It’s my lame attempt to keep work and personal life separate. 😉
Eric Dye says
That’s what I do. I tried having it all in one. Complete FAIL.
Jennifer Valerie says
This is awesome! I just pinned a few tabs. Thanks for sharing this.
Eric Dye says
Awesome!