With more than 64% of the global market as of last month, Google’s Chrome browser is by far the most popular desktop web browser by a massive margin. The next closest is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and its global market share totalled less than 11% in December 2018. Chrome is the browser of choice for so many reasons, not the least of which are things like simplicity and speed. When it comes to speed though, things aren’t always straightforward. Chrome is typically lightning fast when loading webpages, but your browser speed can really take a hit when there are tons of tabs open. And if you’re anything like us here at BGR, you pretty much always have tons of tabs open.

Over the years, Google has made plenty of optimizations aimed specifically at improving performance and reducing resource utilization by background tabs. Even still, things tend to slow down — especially on older PCs — when you leave too many tabs open. As it turns out though, there’s an awesome free Chrome extension that lets you give your browser a big speed boost with a single click.

The extension in question is called One Tab, and it’s completely free to download from the Chrome Web Store. Once installed, a One Tab button will appear in your browser to the right of the address bar. Anytime you get overwhelmed by open tabs or your system starts to slow down, simply click the button and all of your open tabs will be closed. In their place, you’ll find a single tab with a list of hyperlinks, one for each tab that had been open. When you need to go back to a page, just select it from the list. It’s a wonderfully simple and effective solution to the problem, and again, it’s totally free.

Here’s the full description from the developer’s site, followed by a download link:

How it works

Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the OneTab icon to convert all of your tabs into a list. When you need to access the tabs again, you can either restore them individually or all at once. When your tabs are in the OneTab list, you will save up to 95% of memory because you will have reduced the number of tabs open in Google Chrome. Privacy assurance

We take your privacy seriously. Your tab URLs are never transmitted or disclosed to either the OneTab developers or any other party, and icons for tab URL domains are generated by Google. The only exception to this is if you intentionally click on our ‘share as a web page’ feature that allows you to upload your list of tabs into a web page in order to share them with others. Tabs are never shared unless you specifically use the ‘share as a web page’ button. How do you make money?

OneTab is free of charge and is not designed to make money. It was created because we badly *needed* it for our own use, and we wanted to share it with the world. Additional Benefits

Depending on how many scripts are running inside your tabs, moving them to OneTab can also speed up your computer by reducing the CPU load. We have also had reports that this also contributes to your computer resuming from sleep more quickly. More Features

OneTab lets you easily export and import your tabs as a list of URLs. You can also create a web page from your list of tabs, so that you can easily share your tabs with other people, other computers, or with your smartphone or tablet. You can drag and drop tabs in your OneTab list to reorder them. You can also hold down the Ctrl or Cmd key while restoring tabs and they will remain in your OneTab list (meaning you can use OneTab as a way of quickly launching a set of commonly used tabs). OneTab supports retina displays. Note that OneTab is designed to leave in place any ‘pinned’ tabs you have. You will not lose your list of tabs if you accidentally close the OneTab window, if your browser crashes, or if restart your computer. 2018 Update: We’ve been working like crazy to make OneTab much much better – including implementing lots of your feature suggestions. We’re full time on it now and have great momentum. Thank you for all of your thoughtful feedback, please keep it coming.

Download One Tab for free