The Wavebox Hierarchy: What Sits Inside What

Wavebox organizes your work in seven levels:

Space > Group > App > Saved Items > Tab group > Pinned tab > Open or sleeping tab

In List and Explorer layout, where Space circles are hidden, most people add a divider between Space and Group, so the chain reads Space > Divider > Group > .... More on that below.

Read top to bottom, that is also a ladder from most permanent to most temporary. A Space is a decision you make once. An open tab is something you will probably close this afternoon. Everything in between is a choice about how permanent you want a page to be.

The seven levels are the same whichever webdock layout you use. What changes between layouts is how much you can see at once, and whether tabs appear in a horizontal strip or nested in the sidebar. There are no limits on how many Groups, Apps, tab groups or tabs you create.

The rule underneath all of it

Every app and tab belongs to a Space, and the Space is what holds the sign-in. A Group has a Space attached to it as well, and its job is to save you choosing one every time, so whatever you add while working in that Group goes into that Group's Space automatically.

That is a helpful default rather than a rule, so a Group can hold apps from more than one Space. Most people never need that, but it is what makes the deeper setups at the end of this article possible.

The seven levels

App tooltip Saved Items are the level people miss, and they are usually the one that helps most. If you keep a dozen reference pages open per client because you are afraid of losing them, those are Saved Items. They sit on the client's app, cost nothing, and are one hover away.

Dividers, and how Spaces come back in List and Explorer

A divider is a nameable, collapsible line between Groups in the webdock. Click it and everything beneath folds away up to the next divider.

In List and Explorer layout, where the Space circles are hidden, most people use dividers to split their Groups back into their Spaces. Name each divider after a Space, put that Space's Groups under it, and the structure you lost by hiding the circles is drawn back into the flat list, with the bonus that you can now collapse a whole client for the afternoon. It is the reason those layouts stay legible once you have twenty Groups in one sidebar.

Right-click anywhere in the webdock, or on a Group icon, to add one. The Drag & Drop Spaces Manager is the quickest way to do a lot of this at once: it reorders Groups, moves apps between them, and groups by Space. Dividers work in all three layouts, and they survive switching between them.

Spaces layout

The default for new users. Space circles run along the top of the webdock, and you see the Groups belonging to whichever Space you have selected. One context at a time.

Space: Client A
└── Group: Client A
    ├── App: Gmail (client A account)
    │   ├── Saved Items (not open, one hover away)
    │   ├── Pinned tab: shared drive
    │   └── Tab group: Invoices
    │       ├── Tab
    │       └── Tab
    ├── App: Slack
    └── Tab group: Research
        ├── Tab
        └── Tab

Switch to Client B and the webdock shows Client B's Groups instead. Anything you open while you are there lands in Client B's Space, signed in to Client B's accounts, without you choosing anything.

List layout

Spaces move into the background and every Group from every Space appears in one scrollable list. The tabstrip works exactly as it does in Spaces layout, so everything below the Group is identical. The difference is above the Group: instead of picking a Space and then a Group, you pick a Group directly and Wavebox puts you in the right Space.

Divider: CLIENT A                    (one divider per Space)
├── Group: Delivery                  (Space: Client A)
│   ├── App: Gmail
│   │   └── Tab group: Invoices
│   └── App: Slack
└── Group: Reporting                 (Space: Client A)
Divider: CLIENT B
└── Group: Client B                  (Space: Client B)
Divider: INTERNAL
└── Group: Admin                     (Space: Work)

Naming each divider after a Space is the usual pattern here, and it is what keeps a long list readable. This is the layout to choose if you want all your resources visible at the same time, which is why people running many clients tend to settle on it. Drag the webdock's right edge wider to show full Group names, or narrower for icons only. To check which Space a Group is in, right-click it and open Group Settings, or hover an app and look for the Spaces Indicator Icon at the top right of the tooltip.

Because Groups from every Space are visible together, this is also the layout for putting apps from several Spaces side by side in one Group, for example a single "Client Gmails" Group holding five clients' inboxes.

Explorer layout

Explorer shows the same all-Spaces scope as List, drawn as a tree. It is the only layout with no tabstrip: apps and tabs nest under their Group in the sidebar instead, and you expand and collapse each branch with the arrows.

Group: Client A
├── App: Gmail
│   ├── Folder: Invoices
│   │   ├── Tab
│   │   └── Tab
│   └── Tab
├── App: Slack
└── Folder: Research
    ├── Tab
    └── Folder: Competitor pricing
        └── Tab

Explorer is the one place the tree goes deeper: right-click a tab inside a folder and choose Create Folder again, and you get a sub-folder. That extra level is Explorer's alone, because the tabstrip in the other two layouts holds a flat row of tab groups. Switch to List or Spaces and a sub-folder appears as a tab group of its own, sitting alongside the other tab groups instead of inside its parent.

Everything else about your setup is unchanged. Apps still keep their own Space, hover menus still work, and Saved Items are still on each app. List and Explorer are easily interchangeable, so switching between them is a matter of whether you want a flat list or a tree today.

Tab groups and tab folders are the same thing

A tab group in the tabstrip and a tab folder in Explorer are one object viewed two ways. Bundle five tabs into a "Research" group in List layout, switch to Explorer, and there is a Research folder holding those five tabs. Switch back and the pill is where you left it.

The one place the two views differ is nesting. A folder inside a folder is an Explorer idea, so in the tabstrip both folders show as tab groups side by side. Your tabs stay where you put them either way, and the grouping keeps its name and color, so what you lose in the flat view is one level of indentation.

Tabs inside a group or folder survive a restart, in the same way pinned tabs do. Right-click a tab group's pill for group-wide actions: sleep every tab in it, wake them all again, or send the whole set to a new window or a different Group. Full detail in Tab Groups in the Tabstrip and Tab Folders.

Each Group's tabstrip is set up on its own

The tabstrip belongs to the Group, so each Group carries its own settings. The one to know about is whether the strip shows tabs for the whole Group or only for the app you are currently in. Right-click the tabstrip, then "Tabs" and choose "Show All Tabs" or "Show App Tabs".

Show App Tabs is the quieter setting for a Group with several busy apps in it, because you only ever see the tabs belonging to whichever app you are working in. Set it on the client Groups that get noisy and leave the rest showing everything.

A Group with a single app can hide its tabstrip altogether, from right-click the Group icon > Tabstrip settings.

What carries over when you switch layout

The structure is stored once and drawn three ways, so switching only changes the view. Spaces, Groups, Apps, Saved Items, tab groups and folders, pinned tabs, dividers, colors and icons all stay exactly as they were.

Three things genuinely differ:

1. The tabstrip disappears in Explorer, so tabstrip settings such as Show App Tabs, tab position and wrap-versus-scroll only apply in Spaces and List.
2. Space circles only appear in Spaces layout. In List and Explorer, Spaces still exist and still hold your sign-ins, they are just not drawn. Create a new one from Settings > Spaces > New Space, or accept the prompt when Wavebox spots you adding a second account of the same service.
3. A Group holding apps from more than one Space is easiest to work with in List or Explorer, where all the Spaces are on screen together.

To switch, hover the Settings cog at the bottom left of the webdock and click "Webdock Layout". In List and Explorer there is also a small layout icon next to the navigation buttons at the top left.

Two other places things get organized

The ladder above covers everything in the webdock. Two smaller systems sit alongside it and answer different questions.

Bookmarks work as they do in Chrome and any other browser, with a bar and a side panel and set up in Settings > Search for "Bookmarks". The thing to know is that the same bookmarks bar shows across every app, Group and Space, so bookmarks are the one organizing surface that is not scoped to a context. That makes them right for links that belong everywhere and imported bookmarks you have not filed yet, and wrong for anything client-specific. A page you would file under one client is better as a Saved Item on that client's app.

Dashboard Collections answer "I want to close all of this and get it back next week." A Dashboard is a customizable page you can open from the webdock or a Group's tabstrip, and a Collection widget on it holds shortcuts to apps and tabs. Click the Spaces Indicator Icon in the address bar, choose Send all tabs to dashboard, pick a Dashboard and a Collection, and your whole current tab set is stored as a tab session. Close everything. Open the Collection when you come back, and there it is, with an "Open and Track Shortcuts in a New Window" option in the widget's cog if you want the session in its own window. Folders of shortcuts inside a Collection open as tab groups.

So the two work at different timescales. Tab groups organize what is open now, and a Collection stores a set of pages for a project you are not working on this month.

Coming from a tab manager or a bookmarking tool

If you are used to an extension that saves collections of tabs and reopens them later, the thing to know is that Wavebox has no restoration step. Your structure is the browser itself, so it is simply there when you open Wavebox in the morning.

You start working straight away. Your clients, apps and tabs are already in place and already signed in, so the first thing you do in the morning is the work. An app that is already open cannot be opened a second time by accident, and there is no rebuild step that can half-finish and leave you sorting it out.

It grows as far as you need it to. Wavebox loads what you are actually using in the main window and lets everything else sleep, so you can keep a large number of tabs open, and a setup with thirty client Spaces still feels quick. Everything stays one click away. Every Space, Group, App and tab is reachable from the webdock so changing context is a single click.

Any tab can be found instantly using the Global Search. Click on the magnifying glass in the top right hand corner of any window.

Your setup follows you between machines. Profile Sync mirrors your whole configuration onto the other computer, so your Spaces, Groups and apps are waiting for you there. Open tabs are the one thing that does not come across automatically: pull those over when you want them with the + icon in the webdock > Tabs from other devices.

And you keep the saved, reopenable set of pages you are used to. That is what Dashboard Collections are for, described above. A Template goes further and turns any Group into a share code that rebuilds the whole thing, apps and settings included, on someone else's machine.

Related articles: Webdock · Spaces · Groups · Apps · Apps, Saved Items, Tabs & Pinned Tabs · Tabs & Tabstrip · Webdock: List Layout · Webdock: Explorer Layout · Tab Folders · Tab Sessions · Tooltips (Hover Menus) · Dividers · Bookmarks Bar & Panel · Secondary Windows · Link Opening Engine