A couple years ago an extension called “Why, Salesforce?” came on the scene to answer one question: Why can’t I add tabs to Setup in Salesforce? Warren Walters made the lives of Salesforce admins and consultants so much easier!
The plugin was great, but Warren is a busy guy and his focus has understandably been on his other projects, like his Salesforce Developer course. There were quite a few outstanding feature requests from users and from his own personal list that had been lingering for some time. I thought about just working on some updates to this plugin, but I knew that I wanted to totally overhaul it with a new UI and new functionality, so it made more sense to build a new plugin.
And by build, I mean vibe code prompt engineering.
I fired up Claude and went to work. I started from a blank slate and started guiding the build process. Rather than give all my instructions at once, I started small. I added one feature at a time so that I could track changes in github and keep an eye on the plugin to make sure it was working properly.
It was a lot of work! Claude generally did a really good job not messing things up when I added new features, but it did get stuck a few times. When that happened, ChatGPT was able to clarify a fix and then I could get back to using Claude.
I’m really proud of what I was able to achieve with sf tabs and how robust all the features feel. There are still some quirks with a couple features that depend on Salesforce, like setting the active tab styling, but everything else is really solid.
Install
sf tabs is available for Firefox and for Chrome. It will also soon be available for Edge. There are no plans to make it available for Safari unless someone wants to sponsor the $99/year developer fee. If you are already an Apple developer, the code is open source on github and you can fork it to release it for Safari if you want to release a version.
On Chrome, if you have configured Enhanced protection (Settings > Privacy and security > Security), you may see a warning when you try to install the plugin. This is automatic in Chrome for new plugins. The plugin is safe to install!
After Installing
When you first install sf tabs you will have a default list of tabs: Flows, Installed Packages, Users, Profiles, Permission Sets. You will also need to grant permission for the plugin to run on each Salesforce instance you use since it is access information about tabs and browser storage.
Adding Tabs
There are two ways to add a new tab to the plugin. The first is my favorite feature in the plugin: Quick Add. Click on the cloud with the lightning bolt and instantly get a new tab!
The second method is by clicking on the plus button and manually adding the name and URL that you need. For sf tabs, you only need to include the page slug. Quick Add handles this for you so that you don’t get it wrong.
Here is a brief demo of the Quick Add function. I navigated to the Profiles page in setup and then clicked on Quick Add to add a new tab for that page. I also set it to open in a new tab.
In addition to Setup tabs, sf tabs also supports adding tabs for Objects and special Setup pages, like Flow Trigger Explorer.
Tabs can be re-arranged by clicking on the drag handle on the left of the tab in the plugin popup window. Click the toggle to open a tab in a new window. Click the track can to delete it.
Settings
sft tabs also has a few settings that you can configure. Click on the gear icon to open/close Settings.
I included light and dark modes, as well as system mode so that you can decide how you want the plugin to look on your computer. There is also a Compact Mode which makes the tabs in the plugin smaller, allowing you to see more of them at a time.
When you delete a tab, you are prompted with a confirmation dialog. If you prefer to skip that confirmation step, you can enable the option for “Don’t prompt when deleting”.
If you’ve added a bunch of tabs and want to get back to the default configuration, just click “Reset to Defaults”.
Import/Export Settings
The Import/Export Settings feature makes it easy for you to backup your settings, install on another, or share your tab set with coworkers. When you click on the button a new browser tab will open where you can choose to Export Confirmation of Import Configuration. sf tabs uses JSON to import and export all of your tabs and settings, including your preferences for light and dark mode.
Tab Design
I mentioned earlier that tabs can follow the active tab design. This is actually even better than just that! It also uses the theme branding color for active and hover state on tabs.
A few things are happening in the screenshot above. As you can see, the Home tab no longer has the active tab setting that you normally see. Instead, it has moved to the Flows tab. I’m hovering over the Contact tab to show the hover state of a tab, which is using the same tab color. This is able to pick up the branding color for tabs so that it always matches the org you’re working in.
Technical note
Due to the way Salesforce loads the pages and elements (the DOM) and the way the plugin interacts with the DOM and injects the tabs, the Active tab styling doesn’t always work. This generally happens on pages that have a lot of stuff to load, like Profiles or Permission Sets, where the timing is unpredictable. When this happens, you will usually end up with the Home button and your custom tab having the active tab style.
And as always…
If you’re using sf tabs, please consider leaving a quick review on the extension page in your favorite browser. This will help the plugin rank better and encourage more people to install it. And if you really find the plugin useful, please share it on LinkedIn and tag me in your post.
Found a bug or have a feature request
If you come across a bug or have a feature request, you can message me on LinkedIn or add an issue to the project on github.