Marked, not colour-coded
Open tabs lists every tab across every window, and a duplicate is labelled with the word rather than a shade of something. The copy you have had open longest is the one left unmarked.
Close the duplicates. Better still, stop them.
Latr marks every duplicate in your tab list, closes them in one go, and can prevent the next one existing - by taking you to the tab you already had instead of opening a second copy.
- No account, ever
- Free, and not a trial
- Nothing leaves your browser
The problem
The same page, four times, in three windows
You open a link from Slack, and the page is already open two windows away. An hour later the tab strip has three copies of the same pull request and two of the same spreadsheet - and because every one of them is a page you genuinely wanted, none of them looks like clutter until you go looking.
How it works
Find them, close them, stop them
Close them in one go
Find duplicate and idle tabs counts what is open, how many are duplicates and how many you have not touched in a while - then closes the extra copies on one press, keeping the original.
Or prevent the next one
With prevention on, a link onto a page you already have open takes you to the tab you had instead of making a second one. A notification says so, and one click opens it again.
The guards
What it will never close
An address you typed, a bookmark, a restored window and a tab you duplicated on purpose are all left alone - prevention acts only on a tab opened from a link in another tab, within ten seconds of that click. It never closes the only tab in a window either, because from the outside that is the browser vanishing. And it is off until you turn it on.
Only in Latr
No permission warning at install
Closing duplicates means reading your tabs, and every extension that does it asks for that the moment you install - the dialog that says it can read your browsing activity, shown before you have seen a single screen. Latr's install dialog shows nothing at all: tab access is optional, asked for at the click that needs it, and declining leaves every other part of the product working.
Questions
Duplicate tabs, asked directly
Can it switch to the tab I already have instead of opening a copy?
Yes, with duplicate prevention on. When a link opens a page that is already open, Latr closes the new copy and brings the original tab forward, and a notification lets you reopen the copy if you meant it.
Can I find duplicate tabs across all my windows?
Yes. Duplicates are marked in the Open tabs list across every window, and closing them can be done for one window or for all of them at once.
Does Chrome close duplicate tabs on its own?
No. Chrome will jump to an existing tab if you search for the page in the address bar and pick the "Switch to this tab" suggestion, but nothing stops a link opening a page you already have, and nothing sweeps up the copies you have accumulated. Both of those are what this does.
What counts as a duplicate?
Two modes. Exact compares the whole address, so a page with a different fragment or a different tracking parameter is left alone. Ignoring the fragment treats example.com/doc and example.com/doc#section-4 as the same page, which is right for long documentation and wrong if you deliberately keep two anchors of one page open. Pick per taste; exact is the default.
Will it close a tab I meant to open twice?
Prevention only ever acts on a tab opened from a link in another tab, within ten seconds of that click. An address you typed, a bookmark, a restored window and a tab you deliberately duplicated all have no opener, so none of them are ever touched. It also never closes the only tab in a window, which would close the window.
What if it gets it wrong?
A notification says which page it closed and one click opens it again. Three in a row replace each other rather than stacking, because three duplicates is one thing to know about rather than three.
Does this need a scary permission?
Reading your tabs does need permission, and that is exactly why Latr asks for it at the click rather than at install. The install dialog shows no warnings at all. Turn the feature on and Chrome asks once; decline and nothing else in Latr changes.
Does it work in Edge and Firefox?
Yes. Edge takes the identical package to Chrome. Firefox has its own build from the same source.
Close the tab.
It will come back.
Free, no account, and nothing leaves your device. About ten seconds to install, and one keystroke to use.
Also on Brave, Vivaldi, Arc and Opera - straight from the Chrome Web Store listing.