Bookmarks & Pinned Tabs

In Phi the sidebar is your workspace, and bookmarks and pinned tabs are the two ways you keep the pages that matter. This chapter goes deeper than Layouts & Navigation on how they behave — starting with the thing that surprises many people moving from traditional browsers: in Phi, a bookmark opens in place as a tab.

Bookmarks that open in place

In a traditional browser a bookmark is a dead link: clicking it always spawns a fresh tab, and you end up with duplicates of the same page. Phi treats a bookmark as a living entry instead. Click one and it opens in place — that same sidebar entry becomes its live tab. Close the page and the bookmark stays exactly where it was, ready to open again. If the bookmark is already open, clicking it just activates that tab rather than making a second copy.

This is the idea Arc and Dia popularized: the sidebar holds living things, not a separate archive you visit twice a year. Phi follows that model, while keeping a real bookmark tree — with folders — so you still get the organization a bookmark archive gives you.

Making and organizing bookmarks

• Create a bookmark by dragging a tab into the sidebar, or right-click a tab and choose Add to Bookmark (it reads Add to Bookmark Bar in Comfortable Mode). Use Add to Folder to drop it straight into a folder.
• Organize with folders. Bookmarks nest into folders, and you can make a sub-folder with New Nested Folder….
• Save a Split as one bookmark. From a Split View, Add Split to Bookmark keeps both pages as a single entry that reopens the pair together.
• Manage a bookmark from its right-click menu: Copy Link, Rename…, Edit…, Open in New Tab, Open as Split, and Delete.

Bookmarks are scoped to the Space you are in — each Space keeps its own set, so a work Space's saved pages do not clutter a personal one.

Pinned tabs

Pinned tabs sit at the top of the sidebar in a grid, for the handful of pages you live in — your mail, a dashboard, a project tool. They are persistent: a pinned tab stays in the grid even after you close its page, and clicking it opens the page back up.

• Pin a tab by right-clicking it and choosing Pin, or by dragging it into the pinned grid. Unpin from the same menu returns it to the tab list.
• Reorder pinned tabs by dragging them around the grid.
• Pin a Split. Pin Split keeps a two-pane setup as a single pinned item that reopens both sides; Unpin Split undoes it.

Pinned tabs belong to your Profile, not to a single Space, so they appear across every Space that shares that Profile. Bookmarks, by contrast, are per Space — see Spaces & Profiles for how those layers fit together.

Which should I use?

A simple split of responsibilities:

• Pinned tabs are pages you live in — always at the top, one click away, and shared across the Spaces on your Profile.
• Bookmarks are pages you want to keep — organized in folders, scoped to one Space, and opened in place when you need them.

If you are switching from Arc or Dia, see Switching to Phi for how Phi's living sidebar, bookmarks, and pinned tabs compare.