Session manager for Edge: built in options and add-ons

Microsoft Edge on a Mac ships with more session handling than most people realise, spread across four features with overlapping names and no single page explaining how they relate. Workspaces, tab groups, Collections and the startup setting all claim some part of the job, and the add-on stores hold dozens more. Picking one usually means reading a guide written for an older version of Edge, which is a problem because the Workspaces feature has changed shape recently in a way that invalidates a lot of that advice.

What follows separates the built in features by what they actually persist, states the current requirements from Microsoft's own documentation, and covers the add-on route including the part specific to Edge, which is that many of the best known tools are not published in the Edge store at all.

Four built in features, four different jobs

Workspaces is the closest match to what the phrase session manager usually means. It creates a separate browser window holding its own set of tabs and favourites, saved automatically and available again later. Microsoft states the requirements directly:

To access Edge Workspaces, you'll need a desktop running Windows 10, Windows 11, or Mac OS, Microsoft Edge version 144 or later, and to be signed into Microsoft Edge with a Microsoft (MSA) account or Microsoft Entra ID / Azure Active Directory (AAD) account. Source: explore.microsoft.com

Two things in that sentence matter on a Mac. Mac OS is supported, so this is not a Windows only feature. And signing in is mandatory, which rules it out for anyone deliberately running the browser without an account attached.

Tab groups collect tabs inside a window under a coloured label and can be collapsed. They are lighter than a workspace and stay inside the window rather than creating one.

Collections are a saving surface rather than a session surface. Pages get added deliberately, one at a time, and reopened later as links. Nothing is captured automatically, which makes Collections closer to a bookmarks folder with notes than to a session snapshot.

The startup setting restores whatever was open when Edge last closed. It handles one arrangement, the most recent, and needs no configuration beyond turning it on.

Syncing these is a separate switch again. Edge's own guidance points at Settings, then Sync under Profile settings, then turning on the entry named Workspaces and Tab Groups, which is one toggle covering both features.

What changed in Workspaces, and why older guides mislead

Anyone reading a tutorial published a year or two ago will find a description of Workspaces that no longer matches the product. The enterprise documentation still describes a collaborative feature: a shared set of tabs updating in real time, the ability to see which tab each group member is on, locked tabs that only the creator can unlock, and workspace data stored in the creator's OneDrive for Business. That version required a Microsoft Entra tenant and a OneDrive for Business licence to create a workspace, and sharing was confined to a single tenant.

The consumer facing product page now carries a different answer to the same question:

Sharing, collaboration, and joining workspaces aren't supported in the new Edge Workspaces experience. Source: explore.microsoft.com

If the reason for choosing Workspaces was shared browsing with a team, that reason no longer applies. What remains is a solid personal feature: named windows, tabs and favourites kept per workspace, tabs movable between workspaces with a right click, and the default browser window still available alongside. That is a session manager. It is simply not the collaboration tool the older articles describe, and evaluating it against those articles produces the wrong decision.

How the four compare

Feature	Captures automatically	Holds several named sets	Opens as its own window	Requires signing in
Workspaces	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes, MSA or Entra ID
Tab groups	Yes, while the window is open	Yes, within a window	No	Only for sync
Collections	No, pages added manually	Yes	No	Only for sync
Startup restore	Yes	No, the last state only	No	No
Third party add-on	Varies	Yes	Varies	Varies by vendor

The column that decides most cases is the third one. A feature that produces a separate window changes what the operating system can show about it, because macOS tracks windows rather than tabs. A feature that stays inside one window does not, no matter how well it organises the contents.

The add-on route, and the part specific to Edge

The Edge Add-ons store is well stocked for this category. A search there for session manager returns 43 results, including Tab Session Manager by Sienori, which describes itself as saving and restoring the state of windows and tabs with automatic saving supported, plus a long tail of smaller tools covering session sharing, tab groups and cloud sync.

The gap appears when looking for specific well known names. Session Buddy, probably the most recognised tool in the category with roughly a million users on the Chrome side, has no matching listing in the Edge store. Searching for it there returns fifteen loosely related results and no exact match. This is normal rather than alarming, since publishing to a second store is separate work that many developers skip.

Edge handles the gap by allowing installs from Google's store. Microsoft documents the flow:

If you haven't allowed extensions from other store, you may be shown a dialog to Allow extensions from other stores. Select Allow. Source: support.microsoft.com

The practical steps are to open the Chrome Web Store inside Edge, find the extension, select the get or add button, allow extensions from other stores when prompted, and confirm the permissions. The extension then runs in Edge and updates through Google's store rather than Microsoft's.

That difference has a consequence worth knowing before installing anything sensitive. A tool installed this way is reviewed under Chrome Web Store policy, and its updates arrive on that store's schedule. It also means an extension pulled from one store and not the other can go stale without any visible warning inside Edge.

Reading a listing before installing

Both stores show a last updated date, and after the extension platform transition that date is the most useful number available. All remaining old platform extensions were removed from the Chrome Web Store on 31 August 2026, so anything still listed has been rebuilt on the current platform. What the date tells the reader is whether the rebuild was followed by ongoing maintenance. Session Buddy shows version 4.1.2 from April 2026. Tab Session Manager shows 7.4.0 from July 2026. A listing that has not been touched in eighteen months is a different proposition from one updated last quarter, even though both install cleanly today.

Setting up Workspaces, and the three steps people miss

The entry point is not in the main menu, which is why the feature gets missed entirely. It sits next to the tab search control in the top corner of the window, either through the manage workspaces option or the workspaces menu itself.

The first thing worth knowing is that creating a workspace offers a choice. The new workspace dropdown presents both an option to create a workspace containing the tabs currently open and an option to create a blank one. Choosing the first on a window holding thirty unrelated tabs copies the mess into the new container, which is exactly the outcome the reader was trying to avoid. Starting blank and dragging in what belongs takes longer and produces something usable.

The second is that tabs move between workspaces after the fact. Right clicking a tab offers a move option, so the initial sorting does not have to be correct, and a workspace can also be built out of the current tabs later using the same menu.

The third is housekeeping. Editing and deleting a workspace both live behind the more options control next to its entry in the workspaces menu, and deleting asks for confirmation. Workspaces that go missing or look out of date are usually a sync problem rather than a data loss problem, and Microsoft's own guidance is to confirm that syncing is enabled on every device before assuming anything has been lost. Signing out of Edge does not discard them either, since they come back with the account.

Where every one of these still leaves a gap on a Mac

Suppose all of it is set up correctly. Three workspaces, tab groups inside them, an add-on saving snapshots on a timer. The remaining friction has nothing to do with saving and restoring.

Every Edge window belongs to one application bundle. The Dock shows one Edge icon whether one workspace is open or five. The application switcher moves between applications, so cycling to Edge lands on whichever window was last in front. Mission Control mixes windows from every workspace and every profile into a single group under one name.

Notifications inherit the same limitation. A badge on the Edge icon reports that something happened somewhere inside the browser. It cannot distinguish a message in a work chat from a calendar reminder in a personal account, because from the operating system's point of view both events came from the same application.

Accounts are the third gap. Workspaces separate tabs, not identities. Two accounts on the same service in the same Edge profile still fight over the same cookies, which is why the answer to that problem is a second profile rather than a second workspace. Once a second profile exists, the browser's own session features stop crossing between them, and the reader is back to managing two of everything.

Deciding in one pass

If the need is to stop losing tabs on restart, turn on the startup setting and stop there. If the need is to keep two or three projects apart inside Edge, use Workspaces, since it is built in, free, and produces separate windows. If the need is timed snapshots, exportable history or restoring a set from three weeks ago, that is what the add-ons add and Workspaces does not.

If the need is that ten web apps live behind one Dock icon and notifications say nothing useful, none of the above changes it. That problem is answered by giving each web app a window and an identity of its own, which is the reasoning behind Workspaces as a per app concept rather than a per tab one, and the practical question of coverage is settled by the list of supported apps. For readers arriving from a paid tab manager, the pricing page is the direct comparison.

What to change first

Check the Edge version, since Workspaces needs 144 or later, and create one workspace for the project that currently owns the most tabs. Live with it for a week and note whether the remaining annoyance is losing tabs or finding windows. If it is the second, the layer to change is the window, and that is what SpaceDeck is built to handle.