Troubleshooting

Everything here is a real behaviour of the product rather than a hypothetical. Most of them are cases where TabOasis is working as designed and the design is not obvious.

Sync says there is a conflict

What you see. Pressing Upload raises Sync Conflict: Your data was modified on another device since your last sync.

Why. Another device uploaded after the last time this one synced, so this device’s copy is built on an older starting point. The server refuses the write rather than silently overwriting the newer one.

What to do. Decide which board you want:

• Use Server Version replaces this device’s board with the server’s, right away.
• Keep Local does not upload. It clears the conflict and adopts the server’s version number so your next Upload is accepted. You have to press Upload again — and doing so overwrites the other device’s work.

If you are not sure which side has more in it, close the dialog, export this device’s board first, then decide.

A new device shows an empty board after I sign in

Not a bug, and the most common surprise in the product. Signing in authenticates you; it does not move data. There is no automatic download, ever.

Open the gear → Cloud Sync → Download, and read the confirmation before you accept it: This will replace all local data with server data. If that machine has anything you want to keep, Upload from the machine that has your board first, then Download here.

I paid and TabOasis still says Free

Checkout finishes on Stripe, in a different tab from the extension, so the extension does not always find out on its own.

1. Open the crown in the header. Under the plans is Already completed checkout? Click below to verify your payment and unlock Pro features. — press Check Payment Status.
2. If you already had Pro and it has stopped being recognised, the licence panel has Re-validate instead.

Either one asks the server directly. If it answers No active license found yet. Complete checkout and try again., the payment has not landed as a licence — check your Stripe receipt reached you, then mail the address shown in the licence panel.

The extension also re-checks on its own, but not immediately: once a day for a subscription, once a week for a lifetime licence.

Signing in signed out another browser

Working as intended. A licence covers three extension sign-ins at once. A fourth does not fail — it signs out the oldest of the three, which drops that browser back to Free until it signs in again.

Signing in to the web dashboard does not use one of the three. You can see both lists, and end any session you do not recognise, on the dashboard’s Devices & sessions page.

Spotlight does not open on a web page

It works on the TabOasis board and does nothing everywhere else. Three things are required, and nothing tells you which one is missing — the shortcut simply does not open anything.

1. A Pro licence.
2. The setting. Gear → Preferences → Spotlight search on web pages. It is off by default.
3. Site access. Right-click the TabOasis toolbar icon, open its site-access settings and allow it on all sites. The Preferences hint says the same: Requires “Allow on all sites” permission.

If all three are in place and it still does nothing, the shortcut itself may be taken by another extension — check chrome://extensions/shortcuts.

There are also pages no extension may run on at all, including chrome:// pages, the Chrome Web Store and other extensions’ pages. The overlay will not open there and that cannot be fixed.

I have forgotten my password

There is no password reset in TabOasis — not in the extension, not on the web dashboard, and no reset email is sent. That is a gap, not a hidden feature, and it is worth knowing before you need it.

What actually happens: you cannot sign in on a new device, and any device still signed in keeps working until its session ends.

Mail the address shown in the licence panel in Settings. Meanwhile:

• Your board is not lost. It lives in each browser that has it, with or without an account.
• Export it from a browser that still has it — that works signed out.

Half my board is missing

Check, in this order:

1. Which profile you are in. Profiles do not share cards, and nothing searches across them. This is by far the most likely answer.
2. Whether a tag filter is on. A filter narrows the loose cards in each column.
3. The Archive, under the gear. Archived items are hidden from the board, from Spotlight and from the omnibox — but not deleted.
4. Whether you pressed Download. A Download replaces the local board with the server’s, so anything this device had and had not uploaded is gone.

A Download or an Import wiped something

Both are replacements, and neither has an undo:

• Download replaces the whole local board with the server’s copy.
• Import replaces the current profile with the file’s contents.

If you have an export from before, import it back. If you do not, and another device has not synced since, that device still has the old board — export from it before you let it sync.

Sync refuses my upload as too large

• Server Sync caps the payload at 5 MB and refuses anything bigger rather than truncating it. The usual cause is images pasted into notes, or profile avatars.
• Chrome Sync is much smaller — around 100 KB — and says so: Data is too large for Chrome Sync (about 100KB limit). Use server sync instead. For any real library that message is the expected outcome, not a fault.

AI has stopped working and now reads as not configured

Expected after a browser update. The stored key is tied to the browser environment, so an update can make it unreadable; TabOasis then treats it as absent rather than sending a garbled key. Paste the key in again — nothing else is affected. Full explanation in Where the key lives.

If the Model list is empty instead, the provider rejected the key. Check it where you generated it.

AI search returns odd results

Almost always a missing or stale index.

• No index built. AI search does not refuse — it ranks whatever items come first, which looks plausible and is close to meaningless. Gear → AI Assistant → AI Search Index → Build index.
• Provider changed. Vectors are not interchangeable between Gemini and OpenAI. The button becomes Rebuild for provider; press it.
• New items. Anything added since the last build is not in the index.

Calendar or Focus view disappeared

Two possible causes:

• You switched it off under Preferences → Enabled View Modes.
• Your licence lapsed. Both are Pro views, so the board falls back to Kanban and a non-Blue theme falls back to Blue. Nothing on the board is touched, and it all comes back when the licence does.

Bookmark Health Check misses a page that is really broken

That is a real limit, and the dialog states it: Only shows links with network errors (domain not found, connection refused, etc.). Cannot detect HTTP errors (404, 500) due to browser restrictions. A page that has been replaced by an error page still answers, so the check counts it as alive.

Task reminders never appear

• Notifications in Settings — the master switch and the Task reminders category both have to be on.
• The task needs a due date and its reminder switched on.
• Your operating system has to be letting Chrome raise notifications at all. That part is outside TabOasis.

Reminders are checked about once a minute, and a given task is reminded once a day.

The omnibox keyword does nothing

Type bm in the address bar and then press Space or Tab. Until you do, Chrome is still treating what you typed as a search term. Once the bar shows Search bookmarks:, TabOasis has it. See The omnibox.

Still stuck

Gear → Data Management → Report a bug. It attaches your extension version, browser and language automatically — and nothing from your board. Add an email if you want a reply. See What we store and why.