Basaas Extension

Adnan Ahmed

2021-05-31

ORIGINAL REVIEW **WHY I CONSIDERED USING THIS EXTENSION**
I've been trying Shift, Franz, Ferdi, Wavebox for the last 8 months. Some were expensive but really good (Wavebox), others crashed often (Shift), and some lacked functionality (Ferdi can't screenshare in Discord). Microsoft Edge is now so great, it made less sense to use two browsers simultaneously (Edge + Shift). I've been looking for something that would bring Shift's functionality into Edge. After trying vertical tabs, bookmark sidebars, and numerous programs for over a month, I revisited Basaas, which I had initially written off due to its confusing UI and an app I didn't care about. But this extension is different from the main Basaas app.

**HOW IT WORKS**
If an app is open in a tab, it will automatically switch to that if you click on the icon on the left bar. If there's no tab open with that app, it will open it in a new tab. You can also middle click on an icon to open another tab of it. It's the best of both-worlds between a regular browser like Chrome and Shift.

**PROS**
It's FREE (along with a free tier in Basaas), which I love because I don't fall under the enterprise target audience and can't afford to spend on these extensions. Secondly, the UI is great, and is very customizable. There's dark-mode, which is always a big plus for me as I need consistency in the UI of my apps. I can add custom websites, custom logos, and custom colors, which I love.

The extension takes up 70MB RAM in Edge. Don't know how it stacks up to others, but it's surely lower than using Shift, and I haven't experienced any crashes yet. Plus I'm using Edge's sleeping tabs/hibernating feature so that inactive tabs consume less RAM.

I have another PC at my home, and the extension synced the apps and extension settings across both perfectly. That saved me a lot of headache to be honest, and I'm glad that this feature is there (don't take it for granted, Biscuit of eatbiscuit.com doesn't have this feature).

**CONS**
- It's not instant - it takes 2-4 seconds to appear on the left side when opening a new tab, every time.
- Apps flicker and jump around when reorganizing/adding new apps, or when opening, closing or switching to new tabs.
- Does not recognize different Gmail accounts, even if you have different links for each app. Clicking on the other Gmail apps will keep on opening new tabs instead of jumping to an already open tab.
- Can't turn off unread badges in apps. It's distracting to me and also makes me feel more anxious. I'd turn it off for certain apps if it were possible.
- Websites like Zoho Books, tinypng.com and icons8.com become unusable unless I minimize the sidebar
- can't hide Workplace and Tasks apps from the top left corner, even though I don't use them. It should be optional.
- if you add/remove/reorganize apps, you need to restart browser to make the change reflect in all open tabs.
- the sidebar disappears in pinned tabs, and can't be brought back unless you unpin and refresh the tab.

**CONCLUSION**
If you have the same needs as mine, and can tolerate the cons for now, I'd recommend this strongly. It has replaced not only Shift in my PC, but my bookmarks in the Bookmarks bar as well. As far as I can tell this was launched only a couple of weeks ago, so I'm hoping that the bugs will be ironed out soon and new features will be added soon.

Unie huang

2022-06-24

Love the sidebar and the customization of replacing new tab.