How to export your data from Tabba

Tabba was designed to store data locally (in your browser), this was done for two primary reasons:

• User privacy: Most people don’t want someone else having access to their thoughts, ideas, notes and projects.
• Less overhead (for us): Since we don’t store your data anywhere, there’s fewer pieces of infrastructure for us to maintain and pay for. This is a passion project for me, and I had to balance the technical feasibility with getting something shipped, tested, and validated with actual users.

When building Tabba, I felt it was the best of both worlds to allow me to quickly ship a new product while giving early users full control over their data. All data is stored locally in your browser, so you can export it at any time and import it into another browser, or back it up.

How to export your data

Exporting your data from Tabba is super easy and meant to give you a snapshot-in-time of your current Tabba setup. You can use this process for a manual backup, transferring computers, or even feed it into an LLM if that’s your vibe.

Export all data

1. Click on the Settings in the top right corner
2. Go to the Data tab
3. Scroll down and click Export Data
4. Use the default filename or create your own, and a JSON file will be saved to your hard drive.

Export only your Notes (CSV)

1. From any tab, click on the Notes icon in the top right corner (next to Settings )
2. In the top right corner, click on the three dots menu in the top right corner (next to the Close button)
3. Click export notes
4. A csv file will be saved on your hard drive.

How to import your data

It’s important to note that importing your data will overwrite everything in your current Tabba instance, so please be aware of what you’re doing.

1. Click on the Settings in the top right corner
2. Go to the Data tab
3. Scroll down and click Import Data
4. You will see a confirmation modal showing you how much of each entity has been imported successfully.
5. Refresh your tab to see all your imported settings and content in Tabba.

How is data in Tabba stored?

Most of the heavy lifting is done by IndexedDB which allows extensions like Tabba to store large amounts of structured data directly in your browser. The rationale for using something like this was to keep the overhead low, and keep users in full control of their data; it’s never sent to any external server or tracked by any analytics. It’s nearly universal at this point and works in many modern web browsers, which enables us to support Chrome, Brave, Firefox and Microsoft Edge. For this reason (and a few others), Tabba does not support Safari or Opera.

Tabba data stored in IndexedDB:

• Notes
• Todo items
• Todo filtered lists
• Tags (shared by both Notes and Todos)
• Timezones + customized names
• Bookmarks
• Drawings + folders

Besides the actual content that you’re storing in the browser, a few small preferences and settings are also stored in your browser using storage.local, as described below.

Tabba data stored in chrome.storage.local:

Settings that are accessed very frequently and need to be fast:

• Appearance customizations: color palette, light/dark mode, font preference
• Tool customizations like calendar hours, timezone work/buffer hours,
• Last-selected tool, so it opens when you open a new tab
• Tool-specific settings, such as the Calendar timeframe (quarter, month, week) or which filtered to do list you have last selected. These will persist across sessions so you never lose your place.
• The clock state, if you have customized the clock face display.
• Current version number of the IndexedDB data schema, which aids in future expansion and backwards compatibility.
• Symbols frequency usage data

What about syncing my data across devices?

Tabba is still in beta, and so we don’t currently support a native way to sync your data across devices/browsers. This has been a common request during our closed beta period, and this is something we’ve been testing and building for a future release.

Of course, adding a data sync feature would add a bit of complexity. Today, when you install Tabba, you’ll notice it’s up and running incredibly quickly, just install the extension and you’re in. You don’t even need to create an account, everything just lives in your browser.

You can still transfer your data between two devices by transferring your JSON file (created above in the Data Export feature) to another device, but this is somewhat limited in that both versions of your Tabba are now independent from each other, and probably not what people really want.

Our priority is trust and privacy, and if we did eventually add a cross-device (e.g. two browsers on two different computers) sync, we would only add it to Tabba as an opt-in feature, not as a requirement for all users. I can foresee a future where some users wish to keep their data entirely private/self-hosted, and another portion prefer the convenience of simply creating an account, and being able to log in from many different devices. I would only implement these types of features if it can be done with full transparency and freedom given to the end user.

Have a suggestion? Email me at josh@tabba.so.