Control number of open tabs in Google Chrome

April 6, 2023 12:07 AM

I made some change in Google Chrome to limit the number of open tabs in a window, but I can't remember how I did it nor can I find it.

I DID NOT do this through an extension, it was a setting within Chrome. Can you help me find this so I can modify that number? Thanks in advance.

posted by lometogo to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Search of Google shows no such feature, not even as a beta or hidden.

There is a feature in SafeDoc, which is a part of Google Chrome for Education, that can limit the number of tabs, but that's more of a "Group Policy" than a Chrome feature.
posted by kschang at 12:17 AM on April 6, 2023

Theres a relatively new setting that they have been adding a popup to suggest to turn on to save memory by discarding the contents of unused tabs. But this doesnt limit the total count, chrome: turn memory saver on/off

Googling reveals several extensions that will limit your tab count, and feature requests to add a setting to chrome to do the same, but the feature is not implemented currently.
posted by TheAdamist at 4:30 AM on April 6, 2023

Response by poster: @TheAdamist: I have since found extensions, one very good one, Tab Limiter, but when I enter tab limits into its fields, they seem to be overridden by whatever facility I used prior to installing it.
posted by lometogo at 5:14 AM on April 6, 2023

What happens when you try to open more tabs than the limit? At what number of tabs does that happen?
posted by Aleyn at 9:41 AM on April 6, 2023

Response by poster: @Aleyn, I remember I set the limit to 5. Now, when I open a sixth tab, it opens another window for the new tab.
posted by lometogo at 9:57 AM on April 6, 2023

Best answer: Like everyone else that's weighed in so far it doesn't seem like this is something that is built into the browser. Unless there's some hidden setting somewhere that is controlled via the registry in Windows or whatever the moral equivalent is in MacOS that just doesn't turn up in search results when I go looking, I don't see how this would be accomplished without an extension causing the behavior.

Have you tried disabling all of your extensions? Does it still happen if you create a new profile or use the guest profile? At this point you really need to absolutely rule out extensions if you haven't already.
posted by Aleyn at 10:11 AM on April 6, 2023

Response by poster: Thanks, Aleyn, that seemed to do it.
posted by lometogo at 10:33 PM on April 9, 2023 [1 favorite]