Building eXtab #1: The Problem

how many tabs are currently open in your window?
how many do you remember the context for?

if you're a fellow techie too, i know you too have been through one of those days with an endless number of tabs open in the window and having no clue where the music is coming from?

Hi there, I'm Ishika and I faced the same problem. It actually became crazy when I started working in the Incident Response Team. There would be duplicate tabs of logs, dashboards, documentations and so much more.

I could have just closed the window- but ouch! it'd have definitely hurt. :(

the emotional attachment to my tabs led me to build eXtab-
a smart chrome extension that sits on your window and helps you understand your tabs better

why a chrome extension?
honestly:
A. not one more tab please
B. i'm genuinely intrigued by how powerful but how underrated web extensions are!!

so the current techstack is:

• JavaScript (ES6)
• Chrome Extensions Manifest V3
• Chrome Tabs API
• Chrome Storage API
• HTML
• CSS

Architecture

Current Features

Read All Open Tabs
Displays every currently open browser tab.

Reads tab title
Reads tab URL
Retrieves all open tabs using the Chrome Tabs API

Detect Duplicate Tabs
Identifies duplicate tabs based on their URLs.

Example:

YouTube
YouTube
YouTube

↓

Duplicate found (3)

Remove Duplicate Tabs
Automatically closes duplicate tabs while preserving one instance.

This helps reduce browser clutter without manually searching for duplicates.

Show Idle Tabs (4h+)
Tracks browser activity and lists tabs that haven't been accessed for more than 4 hours.

Displays:

Tab title
Idle duration
Number of idle tabs detected
Example:

Number of Idle Tabs: 9

YouTube — Idle for 20 hours
Pinterest — Idle for 20 hours
LeetCode — Idle for 22 hours

The user can then either navigate to the tab, close the tab or review the tab.