TrueTabs

Arc-style tab butler: no duplicate tabs, stale tabs auto-archived (undoable), tabs grouped by site or by AI topic.

Live in Chrome long enough and you drown in tabs: the same page opened five times, forty tabs you'll "read later", zero structure. Arc solved this at the browser level. TrueTabs brings that experience into Chrome's native UI - no sidebar of its own, no new-tab takeover, Chrome stays Chrome. BEST WITH VERTICAL TABS Chrome can put the tab strip down the left side: Settings > Appearance > Tab position > Vertical. If your Chrome does not show that row yet, it is still rolling out. Turn it on. A horizontal strip at forty tabs is a row of nameless icons - titles gone, groups reduced to colour chips, and everything TrueTabs does is invisible to you. Down the side, every tab keeps its title and every group shows its name and colour, so the structure is finally something you can read. Chrome renders the list; TrueTabs decides what is in it - no duplicates taking a row, stale tabs leaving on their own, new tabs landing in the right group, the order you chose staying put. That is the Arc sidebar, in the browser you already use. WHAT IT DOES - Duplicate prevention: opening a URL you already have switches you to the existing tab instantly - before the duplicate even loads. Typing an open URL into an existing tab works the other way round: your tab wins and the stale copy merges into it (archived, so it's always reversible). One click sweeps the duplicates you already accumulated. - Auto-archive: tabs untouched for 24 hours (configurable 6h-7d, or off) are saved to a local archive and closed. Searchable archive page, one-click restore, a notification with Undo after every batch. - Auto-groups: new tabs group by site (stable colors, clean names) or by TOPIC via AI - one selector; idle groups collapse; "Organize now" tidies a whole window at once. - Smart groups: topic clustering runs on Chrome's built-in on-device AI (free, no keys, nothing leaves your machine) - or your own API key (OpenAI, Gemini, Grok, or an OpenAI-compatible model server on your own machine, such as Ollama). Groups appear batch by batch with live progress. - My groups: your own named groups with routing rules - list the sites that always belong there, or describe the topic in plain words for the AI. Rules outrank all automatic grouping. - "Other" catch-all: with it on, nothing is left loose - a tab that fits no rule, no site group and no topic parks in a grey "Other" at the end. It is a parking lot, never a decision: a real group wins its tabs back, the parking lot re-empties itself when you add a rule or switch modes, and one click on the row files the whole pile on demand. - Order, your way: group order and tab order - Manual (you arrange them), A-Z, recently used, or oldest first. Kept live by default: new tabs slot into place, a manual drag snaps back, and "recently used first" surfaces the tab you touch. Prefer it on demand? Turn "Keep the order automatically" off and the order applies only when you press Organize. - Bookmark groups (optional, off by default): a folder under "TrueTabs" in your bookmarks is a durable group definition. "Open" materializes it (tabs you already have join instead of duplicating), "Update folder" pushes the live membership back, and the popup marks a group that drifted from its folder. Closing tabs never touches bookmarks. Definitions travel between browsers through Chrome's own bookmark sync. - Free memory earlier (optional): a tab going stale can be unloaded from memory before it is archived - it keeps its place in the strip and reloads when you click it. - Dashboard popup: live counts, one-click actions, merge all windows. WHY YOU CAN TRUST THE AUTOMATION - Everything is undoable: every automatic batch has a one-click Undo. - Two strikes: any automatic action you counteract twice is retired for that page or site until the browser restarts. TrueTabs never fights you. - Circuit breaker: automatic closes are hard-capped; anything runaway pauses all automation for 10 minutes and tells you once. - Hard no-touch list: pinned tabs, the active tab, tabs playing audio, meeting sites, and tab groups you made yourself are never touched. - Lock any group: the padlock on its popup row, and automation never takes a tab out of it again. - Apps run their own flows: when a site opens a tab into itself (a chat branching into a new tab, an editor popping the document out, a checkout returning to its order page), that tab is the app at work, not a duplicate you opened - automation leaves it alone. - Session-restore safe: zero automation until your session settles. PRIVACY No analytics, no telemetry, no accounts, no network requests by default. The archive lives in your browser. On-device AI never sends titles anywhere. The bring-your-own-key mode (off by default) sends tab titles and domains to the provider YOU chose, on your key - stated plainly where you enable it. From the maker of TruePin (pinned tabs that cannot be lost). TrueTabs never closes, moves, groups or archives a pinned tab - the two coexist by design. Free forever. Open source (MIT): https://github.com/datysho/truetabs