My browser has 47 tabs open and I only need about six of them.
Articles I meant to read weeks ago. A booking page I finished last night. Half-filled forms. Three Google Docs from the same meeting. Random research that felt important at the time and now I can’t remember why.
I used to close them one by one and feel guilty about the ones I hadn’t read. Or I’d leave them open for days until Chrome ate half my laptop’s memory. These days I spend ten minutes with AI turning the mess into a keep or close list, then I close them myself. Here’s how.
Step 1: Grab the tab titles (and URLs if you can)
You don’t need screenshots. You need a list. On Chrome or Edge you can right-click a tab and look for “Copy all tab URLs” via an extension, or select the address bar and note each title as you go. On a Mac, Spotlight or a quick AppleScript can dump titles. If that feels heavy, open each tab’s title into a note by hand for the first 20. Twenty is enough for one ten-minute pass.
Paste titles and URLs only. Don’t paste passwords, form fields, or anything from logged-in pages. The titles are usually enough for AI to spot the pattern.
Step 2: Ask for four buckets
Get the AI to group everything into keep, read later, close, and unsure. Keep means you still need it open today. Read later means bookmark or send to your reading list, then close. Close means it’s done or dead. Unsure is the small pile you decide yourself.
Most of the win is in the close bucket. Duplicate docs, finished bookings, and “I’ll come back to this” articles usually make up half the bar.
Step 3: Get it to protect the half-finished stuff
This is the bit that stops you making a mess worse. Ask it to flag anything that looks like an unfinished form, booking, checkout, or draft, so those never land in close by accident. Ask it to suggest a simple place for the read-later pile, like a bookmarks folder called “This week” or your phone’s reading list.
Here’s the prompt I use:
“Here’s a list of open browser tab titles and URLs: [paste]. Please only use what I’ve given you and don’t invent tabs. Group them into keep, read later, close, and unsure. Flag anything that looks like an unfinished form, booking, checkout, or draft so I don’t close it by accident. Point out obvious duplicates. Suggest a simple place for the read-later pile. Keep the whole result short.”
Step 4: Spend the rest of the ten minutes closing
Now do it yourself. Bookmark or save the keep and read-later items. Check the close list once with your own judgment on, then close those tabs. Put the unsure pile in a single temporary window rather than leaving them scattered across three.
Don’t let the AI close anything for you. Read the list, then you click close. It takes a minute longer and it’s the minute that stops you killing a form you were halfway through.
Step 5: Stop when the bar feels light
You don’t need zero tabs. You need a bar where the open ones are useful today and the rest are either bookmarked or gone. Ten minutes is enough if you stop once it feels calm. Do it again next week and it’ll take half the time.
Where AI stops
AI here is a sorting assistant, nothing more. It only sees titles and URLs, so it can guess wrong about what’s inside a tab. It doesn’t know which booking you still need to confirm. Use it to make a plan for the pile. You decide what stays open, and you’re the one who clicks close.
Quick questions
Is it safe to paste my tab titles into an AI tool?
Paste titles and URLs only, not passwords or form fields. Skip anything from a logged-in page that could give away private details.
Will AI close my tabs for me?
No, and it shouldn't. It suggests keep, read later, close, and unsure. You check the list and click close yourself.
What if I have over a hundred tabs?
Start with the first twenty or thirty. Clear those in ten minutes, then do another batch another day.