#Partizion Saved Me From My Tab-Hoarding Self – Review Geek

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably already know about my staunch “never close a tab for any reason” way of reckless living. That has been a hill I was willing to die on for a very long time, but recently I found a tool that absolutely changed the way I use my browser. It’s called Partizion, and it’s amazing.

So, here’s the thing. At any point in time, you could look at my computer and find anywhere between 2 and 4 Chrome windows open, with anywhere between 5 and 30 tabs in each. I’d have windows for work research, hobbies (guitar and/or bikes—sometimes in separate windows), stuff I wanted to read or reference later, and others. It was madness, but It’s a system I’ve been using for so long that it just worked for me.

Naturally, that’s a huge hit on system resources. I basically live in Chrome, which is known for being a RAM hog on its own—load that thing up with four windows and like 82 tabs, and ugh. I’ve long used tools like The Great Suspender to counter the RAM-hoarding-ness of my vast tab army, but that doesn’t address the bigger issue of, well, the tab army itself.

Partizion is Kind of Like Bookmarks, but Good

Enter Partizion. I read about this extension/web tool on ZDnet a couple of weeks ago and thought it looked like something I could use in my life. Basically, it’s a way to collect and organize tabs to access later without using bookmarks, lists, or multiple windows. So, instead of having different Chrome windows for everything I want to keep handy, I can now create a new collection in Partizion, add tabs to that collection, and keep my overall browser clutter to a minimum. New year, new me and all that.

Partizion is broken down into multiple “workspaces,” and from what I can tell, you can have an unlimited number—you can even assign each one a custom emoji, which I love. I like to keep things simple, so I’ve been working with just two: Personal and Work. Within these workspaces, you create collections. You can think of these as bookmarks folders that don’t absolutely suck.

When you sign up for Partizion, you have to create an account, so all your workspaces and collections sync between devices, too. This is easily one of my favorite things about Partizion since I often switch between multiple computers.

I started off with collections for each thing I would normally have a new browser window for: work research, guitar stuff, and bike stuff. The collections quickly branched out with more granular organization than I’d used with any other system. Now I have specific collections for things I want to read later, strength training, bike training, guitar, and several others between the work and personal workspaces. It’s great.

I view the collections as their own little “browser windows,” if you will. But they’re not taking up the vast number of resources full windows would. You can jump through collections and open individual tabs as you need them, or hit the “open” button to pull them all up at once. I love that feature for a small collection of three tabs that I always open together. Partizion took that from three clicks to just one. Easy peasy.

It’s Still in Beta but Has Potential to Be Great

All that said, Partizion isn’t perfect (though it’s still in early development, so progress is being made all the time). For example, I’d like to be able to click on a tab within a collection and immediately open that tab—as it stands, clicking anywhere in the collection box just opens that collection. You have to hover over the entry you want to open and specifically click the “open” box. That’s a minor peeve, though.

Finally, there’s the cost. I never expect something that offers meaningful features to be free, though there’s a common (and simply put, wrong) mindset that browser extensions should be free. Partizion is not free, though it does offer a two-week free trial. After that, you’ll have to pay up to keep using it.

You can currently sign up and lock into beta pricing of just $4 a month (billed annually). I’m told that the beta period will be ending soon and the price is going to go up, though the exact pricing model and plans are still being decided. Either way, you can lock in the $4 monthly price if you sign up before the end of the beta.

So far, for this self-proclaimed tab hoarder, it’s been worth every penny.