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Group Chrome tabs with your own regex rules.

Create title and domain rules in Tabula, use practical regex examples, and understand why the first matching rule wins.

By CraftingDorago5 min read

Choose what a rule should recognize

A Tabula rule connects a pattern to a group name and color. Match against a tab’s title or domain. For example, collect GitHub pages into “Development”, or titles mentioning a project into a group for that project.

“Group by name” is a separate shortcut that groups by domain. Choose rules when you want to decide which pages belong together, including pages from different websites.

  1. Open Tabula’s Rules page from the extension. Add a rule, or edit an existing rule’s configuration.
  2. Set the group name and color, choose title or domain under “Match against”, and enter the pattern.
  3. Check the matching-tab preview. Save the rule, or use “Save changes” when editing.
  4. Select “Apply rules” to organize matching open tabs. Grouping preserves pinned tabs.

Three patterns to start with

Copy the pattern text directly into the regex field, without surrounding slashes. Tabula matches rules case-insensitively; you do not need to add /i. The examples below describe matches, not actual tabs from your browser.

Development

Match against: domain

^(github\.com|react\.dev)$

Matches github.com or react.dev exactly. It does not match gist.github.com. The backslash makes each dot literal; the anchors require the entire domain to match.

GitHub and subdomains

Match against: domain

(^|\.)github\.com$

Matches github.com and subdomains such as gist.github.com. It excludes notgithub.com and github.com.example.org.

Project planning

Match against: title

\b(roadmap|sprint|backlog)\b

Matches titles containing roadmap, sprint or backlog as a word, regardless of letter case. It does not match “sprinting”.

The first match wins

Rules run from top to bottom. If a tab matches two rules, the earlier rule decides its group. Put a specific project-title rule above a broad GitHub-domain rule when that project should have its own group.

For example, a GitHub tab titled “Atlas sprint backlog” can match both Project planning and Development. Move Project planning above Development if you want that tab in the planning group. Check the preview again after changing rule order.

Fix a pattern that catches too much

An unescaped dot means any character in a regular expression. Use github\.com when you mean a literal domain, and anchors when you mean an exact match. Avoid a catch-all such as .* at the top of your rules because it will claim every eligible tab before later rules can match.

If nothing matches, check whether you chose title or domain. Domain matching does not include a URL path such as /issues. Also check that the rule is enabled and that its syntax is valid. Start with a small pattern and inspect the preview before applying it.

AI can help draft patterns, but the same order and matching rules still apply. Review generated rules with your actual tabs before relying on them.

Try it with your own tabs.

Tabula – Sort, Group & Search Tabs, by CraftingDorago.

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