Fewer Tabs

A Chrome extension for people with too many tabs. It closes duplicate tabs and helps you find the tabs you haven't looked at in a while. (It was called Duplicate Tab Closer until version 1.4.)

Closing duplicates

Click the extension icon in the toolbar and choose:

Deduplicate in Current Window: closes extra copies of pages open in this window.
Deduplicate Across All Windows: closes extra copies anywhere, keeping the copy in your current window when there is one.
View Duplicate Stats: lists every page that's open more than once.

One copy of each page always stays open. The extension keeps, in order: a pinned tab, the tab you're looking at, a tab in the current window, then the oldest copy (or the newest, if you chose Keep the new tab in the settings).

Tip: pin the extension (the puzzle icon in Chrome's toolbar, then the pin) so it's one click away.

Tabs you haven't looked at lately

Below the buttons, the popup lists the tabs you haven't viewed for the longest, with how long it's been. Choose This window or All windows.

Click a tab in the list to switch to it.
Click × to close it. If you've looked at the tab, pinned it or it started playing audio since the list was shown, it's left open.

Pinned tabs, tabs playing audio and the tab showing in each window are never listed.

Closing duplicates automatically

With Auto-Close Duplicates on, the extension handles duplicates as they open, within the same window. It's on for new installs; you can turn it off on the welcome page or in the settings. It only reacts to a tab opening a page: browsing inside a tab you already have never triggers it. What happens is up to you:

Keep the existing tab and bring it here (default) The new tab closes, and your existing tab moves to where the new one opened and is shown. You keep your scroll position, playing video or half-written form, and it's right where you're looking.

Keep the existing tab where it is The new tab closes and you're switched to the existing tab, which stays in place. Good if you keep your tabs in a deliberate order.

Keep the new tab The existing tab closes and the new one stays, so you lose the existing tab's back history.

Pinned tabs are never closed or moved. Tabs in a tab group aren't moved out of their group; you're switched to them instead. A tab opened in the background (for example with Ctrl/Cmd+click) doesn't take you away from what you're reading.

What counts as a duplicate

Two tabs are duplicates when their addresses match. The part after # is usually ignored, because it's just a position on the page:

example.com/guide#install and example.com/guide#usage are duplicates.
Links from Google that jump to highlighted text (#:~:text=…) are duplicates of the plain page.

Some web apps use the # part to show different pages, so it's kept for them:

App routes starting with #/ or #!, like app.com/#/settings and app.com/#/billing.
Gmail, so your inbox, sent mail and individual emails are never treated as the same page.

Settings

Right-click the extension icon and choose Options, or open chrome://extensions, click Details on the extension, then Extension options.

Questions and feedback

Found a bug or have an idea? Send feedback.