Getting around LoadOut

Before we start

The big idea

LoadOut replaces Chrome's new tab page. Instead of a search box and a grid of sites you happened to visit last week, you get your projects, the things you're actually working on, and everything each one needs.

It's arranged in four layers, and once you see them the whole thing clicks:

1. SpaceStudio
2. ProjectNorthwind Coffee
3. ModeBuild
4. Links & snippetsGitHub · Vercel · Staging

A space is a big bucket, like work or personal. Inside it are your projects. Each project has one or more modes, the different jobs you do on it (designing, building, talking to the client), and each mode has its own set of links and snippets.

The first time you open a new tab after installing, Chrome asks whether you meant to change your new tab page. Click Keep it. If you choose the other option, Chrome switches the extension off; you can turn it back on from chrome://extensions.

Start here

Your first five minutes

Do these in order and you'll have touched almost everything that matters.

1. Open a new tab with Ctrl T. The very first time, LoadOut asks what you're working on: name a project or two, or start from a bookmark folder you already keep. From then on, every new tab opens on the Today screen.
2. Under Active, click a project's name. You're on its project page now.
3. Click through the row of tabs just under the name. Those are modes. Watch the links underneath change: same project, different job.
4. Hover over a section, click its +, and choose From open tabs…. Tick a couple of tabs you have open right now and add them.
5. In the Open workspace box, click Save current tabs. Untick anything unrelated, give it a name, and save. Next time, one click opens the lot.
6. Switch to any other tab and press Alt Shift H. You're back.

Honestly, that's most of it. Everything below is detail for when you want it.

On every new tab

The Today screen

The clock and the search box

Big clock, today's date. Nothing to do there. The search box is the quick way around, with one quirk: when a new tab opens, Chrome always puts your cursor in the address bar, and extensions aren't allowed to change that. So to jump into search, press / or Ctrl K instead of reaching for the mouse.

Search looks through the projects, links, snippets and saved sessions in all your spaces, plus the tabs you already have open; picking an open tab switches to it instead of opening a copy. Use the arrow keys and Enter to pick something; Ctrl Enter opens a link in a new tab. Picking a snippet copies it. If nothing matches, Enter searches the web, and if you type something that looks like an address, such as vercel.com, it goes straight there. Under the results you'll also find Search Google Drive and Search Gmail for whatever you typed; you can switch those off in Settings.

Active

These are the three projects you opened most recently in this space, each shown with its next action: the first unfinished item on that project's list. Tick the box when it's done and the next one moves up. Click the text itself to fix a typo. The number on the right is how many actions are still open, and if the project tracks time you'll also see this week's hours.

This week

This only appears once you're tracking time on at least one project. You get one bar per project, across all your spaces, biggest first. It's a quick, honest look at where your week actually went.

Quick capture and the inbox

Type anything into Quick capture and press Enter. It drops into the inbox just below, so you can get a thought out of your head without deciding where it belongs yet. Pages you save without picking a project land there too (see Catching ideas). When you're ready, click File on an item to send it to a project, or × to let it go.

Projects

Every project in this space, most recently used first. New project asks for a name and takes you straight to the new page. Archived projects wait underneath, behind Show archived.

Spaces and the theme

The colored tag in the top-left corner is the space you're in. Click it to switch. Each space has its own color, and it tints everything, so you always know where you are at a glance. Over on the right you'll find the theme switch (match your computer, light, or dark) and the gear icon for Settings.

On a project page

Inside a project

The name and the ⋯ menu

Click the project's name to rename it. The ⋯ menu on the right holds Add time tracking, Archive and Delete project. Archiving hides a project from Today and from search without deleting anything. To bring one back, open it from Show archived on the Today screen and choose Unarchive.

Modes

The row of tabs under the name are modes. Click one to switch, double-click to rename it, and use + to add another. Each mode keeps its own sections and links, so your Build mode can hold your code and hosting dashboards while Client mode holds email, invoices and the call link. If a project only ever needs one mode, that's completely fine. Leave it at one.

Sections, links and snippets

Inside a mode, links sit in sections: Launch, Working links, whatever suits you. Click a section's title to rename it. Hover a section to reveal its tools: + to add things, a button to switch between tiles and a compact list, and a bin to delete the section. Deleted something by mistake? Every delete shows Undo for a few seconds, and Ctrl Z does the same.

Clicking a link tile opens it in the same tab; Ctrl-click opens a new one, like any link. Site icons stay grey until you hover, which keeps the page calm. The little pencil on a tile lets you edit it, including an optional Why is this here? note that shows in list view and when you hover.

A snippet is a bit of text you paste a lot: a deploy command, your invoice terms, a stock reply to a support email. Click it and it's on your clipboard.

Notes

One plain scratchpad per project, down at the bottom. It saves as you type. No formatting and no folders, on purpose.

Next actions

Your list of next steps sits beside the notes. There's a hard limit of 10 unfinished actions per project; when you hit it, finish or delete one before adding another. That limit is deliberate. A list that can grow forever quietly turns into a place where tasks go to die. Finished items tuck away under Show done, and Clear removes them.

On a project page

Adding links without typing

You can always type an address in by hand, but you'll rarely need to.

Drag them in

Drag a bookmark off Chrome's bookmarks bar and drop it on a section. The section outlines itself and says Drop to add. The same works for the small icon at the left end of the address bar, or a link dragged from another window. To move a tile to a different section, just drag it there.

Paste them

Copy a web address, point your mouse at a section, and press Ctrl V. Paste a chunk of text with several addresses in it and you'll get all of them. If you're not pointing at any section, they go into the first one.

Pick from open tabs or bookmarks

Hover a section, click +, and choose From open tabs… or From bookmarks…. Tick what you want and click Add. Anything already in that section is greyed out, so you won't end up with duplicates.

The first time you open the bookmarks side, Chrome asks for permission to read your bookmarks. It only asks once, and your bookmarks are only ever read right there in your browser.

On a project page

Opening your workspace

A session is a saved set of tabs: the five or six things you always have open when you work on this project. Sessions live in the Open workspace box near the top.

Save one

Open the tabs you'd normally want, then click Save current tabs. You'll see every tab in the window with a tick box, so untick the strays, give the session a name, and save. If the project has more than one mode, you can choose to show that session only in the mode you're in.

Open one

Click the session's number. Its tabs open alongside you, grouped under the project's name in the space's color. Only the first tab loads straight away; the others wait until you click them, so even a big session opens instantly without eating memory. If a project has no saved sessions yet, the box offers to open every link in the current mode instead. Hover a session and use ⋯ to replace its tabs with whatever you have open now, rename it, or delete it.

The home tab

When the tabs open, the LoadOut tab you clicked from joins the group as its first tab. Think of it as your way back. Close work tabs as you finish with them and you'll land on the project page, and because the group never empties, Chrome won't ask whether you want to delete it. Open the same project again later and the new tabs join the existing group rather than starting a second one.

Anywhere in Chrome

Getting back

Wherever you've wandered off to, there are three ways home.

The shortcut

Press Alt Shift H (⌥ ⇧ H on a Mac). If the tab you're on belongs to a project's group, you jump to that group's home tab. Otherwise you go to whichever LoadOut tab you have open, or a fresh one opens.

The popup

Click the extension's icon in Chrome's toolbar, or press Ctrl Shift K. LoadOut home at the top does the same as the shortcut. Below it, type part of a project's name and press Enter to jump straight there. If that project is already open in a tab, you're taken to it instead of getting a duplicate. Type part of a page's title and matching open tabs show up too.

The address bar

Click the address bar, type lo and a space, then start typing a project's name. Suggestions appear as you type; pick one and press Enter. lo followed by Enter on its own takes you to Today.

Anywhere in Chrome

Catching ideas

You're reading something useful for a project, but you're not working on that project right now. Save it where it belongs in two clicks and get back to what you were doing.

Right-click, save to project

Right-click anywhere on a page, on a link, or on text you've highlighted, and choose Save to project. Pick the project, then pick why you're saving it: Research, Competitor, Content idea and so on. That little label answers "why on earth did I save this?" three weeks from now. The toolbar icon flashes a tick when it's done.

Right-click a link and you save that link, not the page you're on. Highlight a sentence first and the quote is saved along with the page. Not sure where something goes? Choose Inbox (decide later) at the bottom of the menu.

The Saved list

Everything filed to a project shows up on its project page in a Saved box, grouped by reason. Use the ⋯ next to an item to turn it into a proper link in one of the current mode's sections, move it to a different project, send it back to the inbox, or delete it.

Other quick ways in

• The page you're on: press Ctrl Shift S and it goes straight to the Saved list of the project you had open most recently.
• From the popup: Save this tab to inbox.
• A thought rather than a page: type it into Quick capture on the Today screen.

On a project page · optional

Tracking time

Time tracking is off by default, and it only appears on the projects you choose. Turn it on from the project's ⋯ menu with Add time tracking, or with Add timer below the sections. Remove it the same way whenever you like; your logged hours are kept.

Start and stop

Click Start. The clock runs in the Time panel, in a small bar at the top of every LoadOut page, in the popup, and as a number on the toolbar icon (42m, then 1:25 once you pass the hour). Click Stop and the time is logged. Anything under a minute is thrown away, since it was almost certainly a misclick.

Only one timer runs at a time. Starting a timer on another project stops and logs the first, so switching projects is a single click.

When you step away

The timer is built not to flatter you.

• After 5 minutes with no keyboard or mouse activity anywhere on your computer (not just in Chrome), it stops, and those idle minutes aren't counted. Typing in your code editor or design app counts as being here.
• Locking your screen stops it straight away.
• If the computer sleeps or Chrome gets closed, it stops at the point it lost track of you.

When that happens the panel tells you, and the button reads Resume.

Forgot to start it?

Click Log time, type how long, pick the day, and log it. It understands durations the way people actually write them; the cheat sheet lists the formats. Entries lists everything logged for the project, newest first. Hover one and click × to remove it.

Totals and exporting

The panel shows Today, This week (weeks start on Monday) and All time, and the Today screen compares projects side by side. If you bill clients, go to Settings and choose Export hours CSV: one row per entry with the space, project, date, start and end times, minutes, hours, and whether it was timed or entered by hand, ready for a spreadsheet or an invoice.

Settings

Settings and your data

Click the gear icon on any new tab.

New tab

The theme, which search engine the search box falls back to, whether to show the clock and the search box at all, and whether to offer Google Drive and Gmail searches.

Opening workspaces

Choose whether sessions open in a new window instead of the current one, whether opened tabs get grouped, and whether tabs load only when you click them.

Spaces

Rename each space and pick its color. That color shows up everywhere (the corner tag, buttons, tab groups), so choose something you'll recognize at a glance.

Data

Everything is stored in this browser on this computer. That keeps it private and fast, and it means you should export regularly. If your last backup is more than a week old, the Today screen reminds you, and Back up now saves the file in one click.

• Export JSON saves a complete backup file.
• Import JSON… replaces everything with a backup file. This is also how you move to another computer.
• Restore previous save undoes the most recent change to your data, for when something went wrong a moment ago.
• Export hours CSV appears once you've logged some time.

Support

If LoadOut has earned its spot, Leave a review takes you to its store page. After you've been using it for a week or so, the Today screen may also ask, once, and at most twice. Not now really means not now.

Danger zone

Start fresh wipes everything and brings back the welcome screen. Load demo data swaps in a set of made-up projects for screenshots or recordings. It downloads a backup of your real data first, and it's best done in a separate Chrome profile.

Keep this handy

Cheat sheet

Keys

On a Mac, use ⌘ in place of Ctrl, and ⌥ for Alt. You can change any of the Chrome-wide shortcuts at chrome://extensions/shortcuts.

Durations you can type into Log time

Honest limits

What it doesn't do (yet)

A few things it deliberately doesn't do, and a few it just doesn't do yet:

• No syncing between computers. Use Export and Import to move your setup.
• The reasons you save things under (Research, Competitor and so on) can't be edited yet.
• Spaces can be renamed and recolored but not added or removed from Settings yet.
• Tiles and projects can't be reordered by dragging yet. Moving a tile between sections works.
• No due dates, priorities or reminders, and that one's on purpose. It's a way into your work, not another task manager.