Deduplicate tabs

At a glance

• Deduplication prevents you from stacking several tabs pointing to the same page.
• Three match modes configurable per rule (Exact URL, URL without ignored params, URL Includes).
• A notification with an Undo button gives you 5 seconds to revert.
• A tab reopened via Undo is protected against re-deduplication for 10 seconds.

When you open a link already open in your browser, SmartTab Organizer keeps a single tab and closes the other. The keep strategy decides which one survives.

Trigger conditions

1. The global deduplication toggle is on (popup or Settings page).
2. A domain rule matches the domain of the tab being opened.
3. That rule has its Deduplication option enabled.

Caution

URLs with special schemes (chrome:, chrome-extension:, about:) are always ignored by deduplication, regardless of the rule.

The three match modes

Exact URL

Two tabs are considered duplicates only if their URLs match character for character: same protocol, same domain, same path, same query parameters, same fragment.

Existing URL	New tab	Result
https://example.com/page?lang=fr	https://example.com/page?lang=fr	Duplicate, closed
https://example.com/page?lang=fr	https://example.com/page?lang=en	Distinct, kept
https://example.com/page#section1	https://example.com/page#section2	Distinct, kept

Best for sites where URL parameters carry meaning (filters, languages, identifiers).

URL without ignored params

Same as Exact URL, but some query parameters are stripped from both URLs before comparison. Useful to neutralize tracking parameters (utm_source, fbclid) or session identifiers that do not affect content.

The parameters to ignore are declared on the rule as a list. Each entry can be:

• an exact name, case sensitive: utm_source strips only that parameter.
• a wildcard pattern with *: utm_* strips every parameter starting with utm_, *_id every parameter ending with _id, * every parameter.

Existing URL	New tab	Ignored params	Result
https://example.com/article?id=42&utm_source=twitter	https://example.com/article?id=42&utm_source=newsletter	utm_*	Duplicate, closed
https://example.com/article?id=42&utm_source=twitter	https://example.com/article?id=43&utm_source=twitter	utm_*	Distinct, kept
https://example.com/post?fbclid=abc&ref=home	https://example.com/post?ref=home	fbclid	Duplicate, closed

Note

At least one pattern must be declared to enable this mode. Without a pattern, it would be equivalent to Exact URL and saving the rule is refused.

URL Includes

Two tabs are considered duplicates if one URL is contained inside the other (substring, in either direction).

Existing URL	New tab	Result
https://example.com/products/item/123	https://example.com/products/item	Duplicate, closed
https://example.com/products	https://example.com/about	Distinct, kept

Best for sites where drilling deep into a section should not create duplicates against the parent page.

Deduplication scope

Three control levels interact, from the most general to the most specific.

Global toggle

The Deduplication toggle in the popup or in the Settings page is the master switch. When off, no deduplication happens, no matter the rules. An orange D badge appears on the extension icon in that case.

Deduplicate tabs without a matching rule

The setting Deduplicate tabs without a matching rule controls what happens on sites you have not configured.

• On: tabs on domains without a rule are deduplicated in Exact URL mode when the global toggle is on.
• Off (default): tabs on domains without a rule are never deduplicated.

Domain rules remain authoritative: a domain covered by an explicit rule always follows that rule.

Per-rule toggle

Every rule has its own Deduplication toggle. When off on a rule, duplicates on that domain are kept even if the global toggle is on.

Keep strategies

On the Settings page, in the Deduplication scope section, you choose which of the two duplicate tabs survives:

Strategy	Behavior
The existing tab	The already-open tab is kept. Useful when the existing tab holds state (scroll, form, session) you do not want to lose.
The newly opened tab	The new tab survives. Heads-up: if the old one was in a group, it disappears from the group.
Grouped tab wins, otherwise keep existing	If one of the two is grouped and the other is not, the grouped one survives. Otherwise falls back to The existing tab.
Grouped tab wins, otherwise keep the new one (default)	If one of the two is grouped and the other is not, the grouped one survives. Otherwise falls back to The newly opened tab. Protects grouped tabs from being closed in favor of an ungrouped copy, while still favoring the freshly loaded version when the group does not decide.

Note

The strategy is global to the extension: it applies to every rule. It is visually disabled when global deduplication is off.

Notification and undo

When the Notify when duplicates are automatically closed setting is on, a system notification appears after each duplicate closure. It shows the title of the closed tab and offers an Undo button.

Clicking Undo reopens the closed tab in the same window and makes it active. If the closed tab was part of a group, the action tries to reattach it to that group; if the group no longer exists, a new one is created.

Note

To prevent the reopened tab from being immediately re-closed, its deduplication is paused for 10 seconds. The notification dismisses itself after 5 seconds if you do not interact.

This setting is independent from the grouping one: you can enable notifications for deduplication only, for grouping only, for both, or for neither.

Organize all tabs

The Organize all tabs action in the popup runs deduplication and grouping together on the current window: duplicates are closed following the keep strategy, then the remaining tabs are grouped by their matching rules.

Next steps

Group tabsThe parallel mechanism that organizes tabs into groups.

Domain RulesPick the deduplication mode and ignored parameters per rule.

SettingsGlobal toggles, keep strategy, notifications.