This Android browser has one thing I love that Chrome sorely lacks

It’s become so easy to accumulate hundreds of active tabs on mobile web browsers. Hours of mindless browsing, fervent link-hopping, and rabbit hole-diving can easily result in tens, if not hundreds, of open tabs. While this is largely a thing of the past for me — I have built up some degree of self-control — some users undoubtedly still struggle with this.

More browser developers have caught on to this in recent years. Google Chrome supports Tab Groups, allowing users to easily organize their tabs into overarching categories or themes. While I do regard this as one of my favorite Chrome features, it feels half-baked compared to another browser I recently discovered.

Fulguris Browser seems rather underrated in the Android browser world. The open-source product launched in 2020, and although it feels particularly humble in some aspects, it includes a host of nifty features that more established browsers lack. Some quirky examples include dedicated user-customizable settings for adjusting screen orientations, allowing for specific layouts for portrait and landscape modes, and beyond. It also supports global dark mode, built-in ad blocking, user script support, and a theming system that draws colors from the site in focus. If you browse Android Authority using Fulguris, it’ll change its tab bar to our punchy green!

All these features are pretty stellar, but one caught my attention: it packs a robust session management system.

I’ll admit, it took me quite a while to spot the differences between Google Chrome’s Tab Group feature and Fulguris’ Sessions feature. After all, both features let users organize tabs effectively, which cleans up browsing sessions and enables more focused research. But the minor differences do make Fulguris a better product in this regard.

While I love the Tab Group aesthetic — I think Google did a great job with the color use for this feature — it isn’t very usable on mobile. Sure, once you’re in a tab group of your choosing, it’s easy to dart between various tabs within it. Chrome adds a nifty secondary tab bar to the browser. However, moving from one tab to another within a group is a different story.

Chrome requires that you activate the new session, then select a tab within it — it doesn’t simply open the last-opened tab in that session. So, an additional tap or a few seconds spent poring through the tens of tabs to find the right one is required.

Fulguris, meanwhile, remembers which tab I last selected in each session. This means that I can tap its Tab button, select the new session, and immediately switch to the last accessed tab in it. I’ve realized just how much time I save and how much friction this tiny change reduces.

Then there’s the real advantage of Sessions vs. Page Groups: backups.

Google Chrome does a good job of harboring tabs in their groups between browsing sessions. If you’re logged in across multiple devices, those tabs may also be synced, making it easy to access them or add new sites to your existing groups.

However, there’s no way to physically back up these tabs or the tab groups. Yes, you can theoretically create bookmark folders for each of them, but that’s a little clunky on mobile.

Fulguris makes full use of its backup system. While you can make a copy of your browser environment for use on other devices or the same device after a reset, it also allows standalone session backups. You can save individual sessions or all of them to physical .bin files stored on your phone. Re-adding them to the browser is as easy as Settings > Backup > Import under the Sessions subheading.

This allows me to offload any tabs I don’t want loaded right now but may need later. Tab Groups demand that these tabs either remain loaded on my phone or be saved to Bookmarks. It’s a minor feature, but one that gives me control over how I store excess tabs.

I’m not going to pretend that Fulguris is the perfect browser. It has some rather annoying design features, such as the lack of a bottom bar option, a cramped UI that takes some getting used to, and a redundant menu design. However, I think its Sessions system knocks Chrome’s Tab Groups feature out of the park.

Have you tried Fulguris? Do you use your browser’s tab management feature? Let me know in the comments.