IsoTabs

A Chromium (Electron) browser where every tab is its own isolated browser: its own cookies, logins, localStorage/IndexedDB, cache and service workers. Nothing is shared between tabs, and each tab's data is kept on disk and restored on restart. Every tab has a name and color you choose.

Download

Get the latest build from Releases:

• Windows: IsoTabs-<version>-portable.exe, a single file with no install
• Linux: IsoTabs-<version>-x86_64.AppImage (see Linux below)

Run from source

npm install
npm start

Build a standalone exe

npm run dist

Produces dist/IsoTabs-<version>-portable.exe (single file, no install). The portable exe unpacks itself to a temp folder on every launch, so it takes ~15–20 s to open; dist/win-unpacked/IsoTabs.exe starts instantly if you copy that whole folder instead. The exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen warns on first run ("More info" → "Run anyway"). The icon source is build/icon.svg.

Linux (AppImage)

Build on Windows with Docker (uses the official electronuserland/builder image):

npm run dist:linux:docker

On a Linux machine, npm run dist:linux does the same without Docker. Output: dist/IsoTabs-<version>-x86_64.AppImage.

Run it:

chmod +x IsoTabs-1.0.1-x86_64.AppImage
./IsoTabs-1.0.1-x86_64.AppImage

• If it complains about FUSE, install libfuse2t64 (Ubuntu 24.04) / libfuse2 (22.04), or run it with APPIMAGE_EXTRACT_AND_RUN=1.
• Sandbox: Chromium's sandbox needs unprivileged user namespaces. Ubuntu 23.10+ blocks them with AppArmor, so there the AppImage starts with the sandbox off and shows a red No sandbox badge in the toolbar. To turn it on: sudo sysctl -w kernel.apparmor_restrict_unprivileged_userns=0 (to keep it after reboot, put kernel.apparmor_restrict_unprivileged_userns=0 in /etc/sysctl.d/60-userns.conf). This relaxes a system-wide hardening setting, so decide whether that trade-off suits your machine.
• Data lives in ~/.config/IsoTabs. Saved session cookies are encrypted with the desktop keyring (GNOME Keyring / KWallet) when one is available, same as Chrome.

Use

Action	How
New isolated tab	Ctrl+T or + (you're asked to name it right away)
Rename a tab	F2, double-click the tab, or right-click → Rename
Change color / clear data	Right-click the tab
Close a tab	Ctrl+W, ×, or middle-click (deletes all of that tab's data)
Reorder	Drag a tab
Address bar	Ctrl+L
Switch tabs	Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+1…9
DevTools	F12

Shortcuts use physical keys, so they also work with a Persian keyboard layout.

How it works

• Each tab uses an Electron partition persist:tab-<id>, stored in %APPDATA%\IsoTabs\Partitions\tab-<id>.
• Tab names, colors, order and URLs are in %APPDATA%\IsoTabs\tabs.json.
• Chromium drops cookies with no expiry date on restart; IsoTabs saves them on quit (encrypted with Windows DPAPI via safeStorage) in %APPDATA%\IsoTabs\SessionCookies and restores them, so logins survive.
• Tabs load lazily: after a restart, a tab only loads when you open it.
• Popups (e.g. "Sign in with Google") open in a window that shares the tab's identity; target=_blank links open in the same tab, since a new tab would be a new, empty identity.
• The user agent is plain Chrome (no Electron/ token).

Isolation covers storage only: all tabs still share your IP address and browser fingerprint.