Tab Economist quietly watches your tabs. When you haven't visited one in a while, it archives it — summarized, categorized, and searchable. Your browser stays clean. Nothing is lost.
No account. No sign-in. Works on Chrome 116+.
Built for people who keep too many tabs open and know it. No judgment — just a smarter system.
No configuration required. It works the moment you install it.
Tab Economist was designed from day one with a single constraint: no data ever leaves your device.
chrome.storage.local — on your device, in your browser.Read the full Privacy Policy →
Everything you might want to know before installing.
No. A tab is only considered idle after you haven't visited it for longer than your inactivity threshold (default: 2 hours). When that happens, you get a notification with an Undo button — you have 30 seconds to cancel. If you do nothing, the tab is archived.
You can also add any domain to your Protected Domains list in Settings, or use Focus Mode to pause all archiving entirely.
Archived tabs are saved to your Library with their title, URL, favicon, category, and AI summary. You can restore any tab at any time with a single click — it reopens in your browser. You can also restore entire stacks as a Chrome Tab Group.
Nothing is permanently deleted unless you explicitly delete it from the Library or clear the archive in Settings.
Gemini Nano is built into Chrome 127+ on supported hardware (most modern laptops and desktops). Tab Economist automatically checks if it's available when you install.
If Nano isn't available on your device, the extension falls back to a rules-based categorization system that uses domain patterns — it correctly categorizes sites like GitHub (Work), Reddit (Social), Wikipedia (Research), and so on. Everything else still works perfectly; you just won't get AI-written summaries.
You can check Nano availability in Settings → AI → Gemini Nano.
Tab Economist has a built-in blocklist that automatically excludes:
• Financial: Banks, payment services, brokerages, crypto exchanges
• Email: Gmail, Outlook, ProtonMail, iCloud Mail, and others
• Medical: Patient portals and health record systems
• Password managers: 1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass, and others
• Streaming: Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, and other active media
• Local/internal: localhost, 192.168.x.x, and private network addresses
• System URLs: chrome://, about:, devtools://, and similar
• Sensitive paths: Any URL containing /login, /auth, /checkout, /payment, and similar
You can add your own domains in Settings → Protected Domains.
Yes. The side panel shows tabs for the window it belongs to, so each window gets its own view. The toolbar badge shows the total idle count across all windows.
Tab archiving runs across all windows — a tab in any window will be archived after it goes idle past your threshold.
The archive is capped at 500 items by default. When the cap is reached, the oldest item is removed to make room for the newest. This keeps storage usage predictable and prevents the extension from slowing your browser over time.
You can export your full archive as JSON before it reaches the cap, then clear it, if you want to keep a longer history.
Not by default. Chrome extensions are disabled in Incognito unless you manually allow them. If you want Tab Economist to run in Incognito, go to chrome://extensions → Tab Economist → toggle "Allow in Incognito".
Note: even with Incognito access enabled, no browsing data is sent anywhere — Tab Economist still stores everything locally.
Right-click the Tab Economist icon in your toolbar → Remove from Chrome. All locally stored data (archive, settings, stats) is automatically deleted when the extension is removed. Nothing persists after uninstall.
Yes. The full source code is available on GitHub under the MIT license. You can inspect exactly what it does, build it yourself, or contribute improvements.