Tab Wrangler

A Google Chrome & Mozilla Firefox extension that automatically closes tabs you haven't used in a while and makes it easy to get them back

Installation

• Tab Wrangler for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/egnjhciaieeiiohknchakcodbpgjnchh
• Tab Wrangler for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabwrangler/

Features

• The Corral: Stores tabs which have been auto-closed so you can re-open as required.
• Exclude list: Provide the urls or domain names of the sites you never want auto-closed.
• Tab Lock: Pick open tabs to "lock". Locked tabs will not be auto-closed.
• Configurable: Pick how long a tab should be considered ready to close and how many tabs should be open at a minimum.
• Smart: Doesn't autoclose pinned tabs, doesn't close all your tabs, just enough to make your browser usable.

Usage

1. Click on the icon next to the URL bar
   • Tab Corral
     • Stores tabs which have been auto-closed. Restoring tabs with green leaf icons on their right sides will have their full history and scroll positions saved. (Full history restore is limited by the browser to the last 25 closed tabs.)
   • Tab Lock
     • Selectively lock tabs which you want to stay open.
     • See the time remaining before each tab will be checked for auto-closing.
   • Options
     • Whitelist certain URLs to never be closed.
     • Set the amount of time to wait before closing inactive tabs.
     • Set the ideal number of tabs to have in your browser.
     • Configure keyboard shortcuts.

Back up & Restore

You can back up your list of closed tabs as well as the number of tabs Tab Wrangler has closed by using the import/export functionality in the Settings tab.

Back up / Export

1. Open Tab Wrangler
2. Switch to the Settings tab
3. Scroll to Import / Export
4. Click Export

Restore / Import

If you previously backed up / exported your list of tabs, follow these steps to restore the list in Tab Wrangler. Note: this will overwrite Tab Wrangler's tabs list; ensure you are not overwriting tabs that you wanted to save.

1. Open Tab Wrangler
2. Switch to the Settings tab
3. Scroll to Import / Export
4. Click Import
5. Select the file created during back up, it will be named similarly to "TabWranglerExport-6-18-2017.json"

Settings

Tab Wrangler's settings are saved and synced by your browser, like Chrome sync for example, to all of your logged in browser sessions if you have sync enabled. Their possible values and their usages are described in the following table:

Setting	Default	Possible Values	Description
checkInterval	5000	0 < checkInterval	How often Tab Wrangler should check for stale tabs to close (in milliseconds)
debounceOnActivated	false		Whether to wait 1 second before resetting the active tab's timer
filterAudio	false		Whether to prevent auto-closing tabs that are playing audio
lockedIds	[]		Array of tab IDs that have been explicitly locked by the user
maxTabs	100	0 <= maxTabs <= 500	Maximum number of tabs to keep in the tab list
minTabs	5	0 <= minTabs	Auto-close tabs only if there are more than this number open
minutesInactive	20	0 <= minutesInactive	How much time (+ secondsInactive) before a tab is considered "stale" and ready to close
paused	false		Whether TabWrangler is paused (shouldn't count down)
purgeClosedTabs	false		Whether to empty the closed tab list when the browser closes
secondsInactive	0	0 <= secondsInactive	How much time (+ minutesInactive) before a tab is considered "stale" and ready to close
showBadgeCount	true		Whether to show the length of the closed tab list as a badge on the URL bar icon
whitelist	['about:', 'chrome://']		Array of patterns to check against. If a tab's URL matches a pattern, the tab is never auto-closed
wrangleOption	'withDupes'	'exactURLMatch', 'hostnameAndTitleMatch', 'withDupes'	How to handle duplicate entries in the closed tabs list

Credits

Translators

• 🇩🇪 German translation by ingorichter
• 🇰🇷 Korean translation by simple-is-best
• 🇷🇺 Russian translation by Voknehzyr

See "Contributing Translations" for how you can help make Tab Wrangler available in more languages.

Developers

• Modernized and maintained by ssorallen in 2017
• Rewritten by JacobSingh in 2012
• Original extension and idea by jacktasia in 2010