BetterTabs Features Roadmap Privacy FAQ GitHub Get BetterTabs

Every tab, in order.

The tab manager for people whose AI assistants open hundreds of tabs.

Get BetterTabs View on GitHub

Free and open source. Chrome 121 or later. No account, no tracking.

That is the real panel, running on made-up tabs. Search, collapse a site, close a tab, or right-click one.

One click, and the whole picture.

No new tab page to open, no menu to dig through. The panel stays beside the page you are reading.

  1. Click the icon

    The panel opens on the right of Chrome and stays open while you browse. It updates as you open, close and switch tabs.

  2. Find the tab

    See every tab grouped by site, or search by name or address. Click one to switch to it, even in another window.

  3. Tidy up

    Close one tab, every tab on a site, or all the duplicates in a click. Nothing asks you to confirm.

When an AI works in your browser, the tabs multiply.

Assistants and browser agents open pages as they research, compare and fill in forms. After an hour there can be hundreds of tabs across several windows, and Chrome's tab strip stops being useful. BetterTabs gives you one list of all of them.

  • See it all

    A hundred tabs on a dozen sites reads as a dozen folders. Search finds one by name, title or address, even in another window.

  • Clear it out

    Close every tab on a site in one click, close the duplicates, or open Recent and close everything you have not touched for a week.

  • Keep Chrome light

    Suspend a site's tabs to free memory while they stay in the list. Export open tabs saves what is open before you close the lot.

BetterTabs does not connect to any AI and cannot tell which tabs one opened. It shows what Chrome has open, so it works whichever assistant you use.

Made for people with forty tabs open.

Each part does one small job, and they all work with the keyboard.

  • Sites

    Tabs are grouped by website, busiest first, each site in its own colour. Chrome's own pages and local files get folders of their own at the end.

  • Four views

    Switch to Windows, Recent or Groups to see the same tabs by window, by when you last used them, or by Chrome tab group.

  • Find

    Search by name, title or address as you type. Press / to jump to the box, or Alt+Shift+F from anywhere in Chrome, and the target button scrolls the list to the tab you are on.

  • Rename

    Right-click a tab and choose Edit name. Give "Inbox (12)" a name you will recognise; Reset name brings the original back.

  • Favourites

    Right-click a tab and choose Add to favourites. Its site icon sits above the search box, one click from that tab. They are still there after you restart Chrome.

  • Clean up

    Tabs with the same address are marked Duplicate, and one click closes the extra copies, keeping the one you are on. Chrome's Reopen closed tab undoes a close.

  • Suspend

    Free the memory of tabs you are not using, one site at a time or from the right-click menu. They stay in the list, marked Suspended, and reload when you click them. The tab you are on, pinned tabs and tabs playing sound are left alone.

  • Back up

    Export open tabs, in the settings, saves the name and address of every tab to a file you keep. Open it in any browser to click through the links, or import it into Chrome's bookmarks. Nothing is stored or sent anywhere.

  • Shortcuts

    Alt+Shift+B opens the panel from anywhere in Chrome, and Alt+Shift+F opens it with the search box ready. Change either at chrome://extensions/shortcuts.

  • Add to longbook

    On a billing or price page (pricing, billing, plans, checkout), a Mac shows an Add to longbook button on that tab. It opens the Add Commitment screen of the longbook app with the site's name filled in, ready for the amount and date. BetterTabs decides from the address alone and never reads the page. If you would rather not see the button, turn it off in the settings.

    Don't have the app yet? Get longbook.

It also follows light and dark mode and Chrome's font size, and works with screen readers and high-contrast mode.

What is coming next.

These are the things other tab managers do that BetterTabs does not do yet. The ones that are easiest to build and need no extra permission come first.

Next

  • Group this siteTurn a site's folder into a Chrome tab group in one click.
  • Select several tabsTick a few tabs, then close, suspend or move them together.
  • Drag and dropReorder tabs, and drag them between windows.
  • Saved listsKeep the tabs of a site, a window or a project as a named list, and open it again later. Kept only on your computer.
  • Close idle tabs for youSuspend or close tabs you have not used for a time you choose.
  • Chrome Web Store, Edge and BraveInstall in one click, and in the other browsers that run Chrome extensions.

Later

  • Automatic backupsKeep recent copies of your open tabs on your computer, so a crash or a bad restart never costs you the lot. This stores page addresses, so it will be a setting you turn on.
  • WorkspacesSeparate sets of tabs for work, a trip or a project, and a switch between them.
  • Notes on tabsA line to remind you why you opened a page.
  • Warn about duplicatesSay so when you open a page you already have open.
  • Tree viewShow tabs under the tab that opened them.

Not planned: syncing between devices. It would mean your tab list leaving your computer, and BetterTabs promises it never does.

It never looks at your pages.

BetterTabs reads the title and address of each tab to draw the list, and nothing else. There is no account, no server and no analytics, and it asks for five permissions.

Read the whole privacy policy, or the longer explanation of each permission.

  • tabsRead each tab's title and address, switch to a tab, and close the tabs you ask it to close.
  • tabGroupsRead the names and colours of your tab groups for the Groups view.
  • sidePanelShow the list in Chrome's side panel and open it from the toolbar icon.
  • storageRemember your view, collapsed folders, settings, tab names and favourites. Pages are kept as a short hash, never as an address.
  • faviconShow each site's icon from Chrome's own cache.

Free, and yours to change.

BetterTabs is open source under the MIT license, with no build step. It is not on the Chrome Web Store yet, so for now you load it yourself in about a minute.

Download the ZIP View on GitHub

Install in Chrome

  1. Download the ZIP and unzip it.
  2. Open chrome://extensions and turn on Developer mode (top right).
  3. Click Load unpacked and choose the extension folder inside the unzipped download.
  4. Pin BetterTabs from the puzzle-piece menu, then click its icon.

Questions, answered.

Why do I have to turn on Developer mode?

Chrome only loads extensions that are not in its store this way. Once BetterTabs is published to the Chrome Web Store, it will install in one click.

Can it see the pages I visit?

No. It has no host permissions and no content scripts, so it cannot read or change a page. It sees only the title and address Chrome shows for each tab, and it never sends them anywhere.

What does it save?

Your chosen view, which folders you collapsed and your settings, kept on your computer with Chrome's extension storage. The names you give tabs and your favourites are saved too, under a short hash of the page address, never the address, so they come back when the page is open again after you restart Chrome.

What is the Add to longbook button?

On a billing or price page, a Mac shows it on that tab's row and in the right-click menu. It opens the longbook app's Add Commitment screen with the site's name filled in. Nothing is sent anywhere: the link opens an app on your own computer, and the page is never read.

Can I get a closed tab back?

Closing is immediate, with no "are you sure?". Chrome's own Reopen closed tab (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + T) brings it back.

Which browsers does it work in?

Chrome 121 or later. It uses Chrome's side panel API; other Chromium browsers may work, but it has not been tested in them.

How do I update it?

Replace the folder with the newer download, then click the reload arrow on the extension's card in chrome://extensions. The changelog lists what changed in each version.

Can I change it or build my own?

Yes. The repository is written so you can hand it to a coding agent: AGENTS.md says how to change and verify it, and docs/SPEC.md describes the behaviour precisely enough to rebuild it from scratch.