Everyone who writes about tab management eventually says "just close them". It doesn't work. You know you have sixty tabs. You know most of them are dead. You still don't close them, because the one time you did, the thing you needed was in there.
It has got worse, not better. A single research session with an AI assistant now opens a dozen source links in ten minutes, each one "worth a look later". Later rarely comes, and the tabs stay.
So this guide doesn't ask you to close anything. It sets the browser up to do it for you, and to keep what is worth keeping somewhere better than a tab.
Why we hoard
Three reasons, and you will recognise all of them.
- Tabs as a to-do list. The open tab is a reminder that this article exists and you meant to read it. Closing it feels like deleting the task.
- Tabs as memory. You don't remember the URL, so the tab is the only pointer you have to that thing you found.
- Tabs as a safety net. Closing costs nothing today and might cost a lot tomorrow, so the rational move each time is to leave it.
All three are real. The fix is to give each of them a better home than the tab strip.
Rule 1: tabs aren't a to-do list
If a tab is open because you need to do something with it, the task belongs in a task app and the page belongs somewhere you can find it. We compared the main to-do list apps a while ago and the advice still stands. For the page itself, put it in a Space named after the project. A Space reopens every tab where you left it, so "I'll come back to this" becomes true instead of a hope.
Rule 2: one click to clear the hour-old ones
Switch's Inactive Tabs button closes everything you haven't touched in the last hour. It's free, it's one click, and it's safe in a way that manually closing isn't, because an hour of inactivity is a good signal that you have moved on. Anything it closes is still in your browser history, and with Pro, Power Search brings it back by title.
Try it at lunch for a week. The number it shows you is the number of tabs you were keeping for no reason.
Rule 3: let it run on its own
With Pro, Auto-tidy does this without the click. Set a time, and tabs and windows that sit idle past it either close or move into a Space. By default that's a Space called Inactive Tabs, or pick any Space you already have, say a "Reading" one. The move option is the one for hoarders. Nothing is deleted, the research session is parked where you said, and the strip you're actually working in stays short. Anything Auto-tidy closes outright sits in a Restore list for a week, so you keep the safety net without the sixty tabs.
Rule 4: stack what is left
The tabs that survive are usually clusters: five from the same docs app, four from Jira, three AI chats. The Switch sidebar stacks tabs by web app, so each cluster is one row with a count. Hover to see every tab in the stack and jump to it. Sixty tabs across nine stacks is fine. Sixty in the strip isn't.
Rule 5: park a project instead of leaving it open
The biggest hoards aren't single tabs, they're whole projects left open "because I'm not done". Put the project in a Space and switch away from it. Everything closes from view, nothing is lost, and when you come back it's exactly as you left it. It's the same as leaving the window open, minus the memory and the screen space.
What it adds up to
Switch keeps a Time Saved count on your device: tabs you didn't hunt for, distractions you didn't take, minutes Focus kept. It's a rough number, but after a month of letting the browser tidy itself it's a satisfying one.
Install Switch for free. Inactive Tabs, stacking and two Spaces are in the free plan, which is enough to stop the hoarding. Auto-tidy is in Pro for when you would rather not think about it at all.