External Tabless

This extension forces all URLs opened from outside Chrome to launch in a new window.

It's a fork of ei14/tab-less-togglable.

Installation: Chrome Web Store

The best way to install External Tab-less it from the Chrome Web Store.

Why?

Examples of opening a URL from outside Chrome:

• From an IDE, such as Visual Studio Code.
• From command line:
  • Mac: open https://github.com
  • Windows: start https://github.com
• An application launching a web login, such as:
  • Bitwarden desktop
  • MS Azure CLI's az login.

When you aren't using Chrome but open a URL that takes you to Chrome, it's unlikely that URL is related to any of tabs you already have open in other Chrome windows. So in general it's nice if the new URL opens in a fresh new Chrome window.

This is the equivalent of Firefox's browser.link.open_external=2.

Mac multiple desktops (aka Spaces): When you're using multiple desktops on a Mac and open a URL from outside Chrome, if you don't already have a Chrome window on the current desktop then you're switched to some other desktop that does have a Chrome window. (Sometimes it happens even when you do already have a Chrome window on your current desktop!) You then need to navigate yourself back to the desktop that you were working in, and bring the Chrome tab with the new URL with you. This extension fixes that problem, the URL is always opened in a new window on the current desktop. (Background)

From other Chrome extensions

URLs opened from other Chrome extensions are unfortunately considered to be from outside Chrome.

Development / Building from source

1. Install Node.js and npm
2. Install Grunt: npm install -g grunt-cli

• On a Mac: brew install grunt-cli

3. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/paulmossman/external-tabless.git
4. Enter the repository folder: cd external-tabless
5. Install the dependencies: npm install
6. Build the extension: grunt
7. In Chrome, go to chrome://extensions and enable Developer mode in the upper right corner
8. Install the extension. There are two different ways to do this; choose one:
   1. Load unpacked. Useful for testing and quick installation.
      • Click Load unpacked
      • Navigate to external-tabless/dist and open
   2. Pack and install. Produces a .crx file that enables you to easily install the extension on multiple browsers.
      • Click Pack extension > Browse
      • Navigate to external-tabless/dist and open
      • Click Pack extension. This will produce a file called dist.crx which can be used to install the extension on any Chrome-like browser. Feel free to rename this file to something more descriptive, such as external-tabless.crx.
      • Run Chrome with the file.
        • From the command line this looks like chrome tab-less-togglable.crx
        • On a GUI, you may be able to simply double-click the .crx file

Configuration

There is nothing to configure, the extension is active upon installation.

To disable it use Chrome's Manage Extensions to turn it "Off".

Contributing

All the code for this extension is open-sourced and can be found online at https://github.com/paulmossman/external-tabless. I'd be happy to receive any feedback, hear about any bugs or accept any pull-requests for new code at that address.