Too many tabs? It's not you, it's your browser. It needs better tab management

Have you ever stopped to look at how many tabs you have across the top of your browser? Is that number so large that you can’t make out the favicons for each of those sites, forcing you to click through them to find the site you need?

The frustration described above is more common than you might think. Part of the reason is that many browsers still haven’t figured out how to manage tabs with any level of efficiency.

Also: 5 great Chrome-like browsers that put your privacy first

However, a handful of browsers make working with an ever-growing list of tabs so much easier that you’ll wonder why you haven’t already made the switch.

Trust me — once you’ve experienced real tab management in a web browser, you won’t look back. In fact, after I started using one of these browsers, I couldn’t go back to the old-school method of hunting for tabs in a sea of tiny icons.

If that sounds like a frustration you’d prefer to leave behind, read on, my friend, because your tabs are about to get managed.

1. Opera

I’ll start with the browser that made me leave behind Firefox and never look back. That browser is Opera, and the feature is called Workspaces. With Workspaces, you create categorized spaces (such as Social Media, Shopping, News, and Work) and can open related tabs in those spaces, quickly switching back and forth. You could spend time viewing work-related sites in the Work Workspace and then move to the Shopping Workspace to find a new book to read. Hit the Social Media Workspace and craft a pithy post. 

Also: 5 great Chrome-like browsers that put your privacy first

Workspaces can be accessed from the sidebar, and you can create as many as you need. Even better, you can pin specific tabs to specific workspaces. You can also customize keyboard shortcuts to allow you to switch from one workspace to the next without your hands leaving the keyboard. 

Opera is free to use and can be installed on Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android, and iOS.

Best for: Those who want serious tab management, use different operating systems, and don’t mind installing closed-source software.

2. Arc

On a daily basis, Arc does everything in its power to lure me away from Opera. On MacOS, it certainly succeeded. If the development team would release a version of Arc for Linux, it would be my default browser on every platform. You see, Arc takes Opera’s Workspaces feature and improves upon it by allowing you to better customize each space. Not only can you give each space a unique theme, but you can also associate each space with a different profile. By associating each space with a different profile, you can customize each profile so that each space functions differently. 

Also: Try the world’s best browser while you can – because Arc’s creator has other plans

For instance, you could set your Workspace to use the more secure Brave Search engine  and your Writing space to default to Perplexity.ai as its search engine. It doesn’t hurt that Arc is also one of the best-looking browsers on the market. If you use Arc on a touch-pad-enabled device (with multipoint gestures), you can easily swipe between spaces.

Arc is free but only available for MacOS and Windows.

Best for: Those who value efficiency as well as aesthetics.

3. Zen Browser

Zen Browser did for Firefox tab management what Opera did for Chrome. Zen Browser borrows from Arc’s Spaces theming by allowing the user to customize the theme for the entire browser. To that end, you could have one browser theme for your Work workspace, a different theme for your Social workspace, and a different theme for your News workspace. With this feature, there’s no doubt about which workspace you’re using. Zen Browser also allows you to pin specific tabs to specific workspaces.

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Zen Browser is just as elegant as Arc, and I inch closer every day to switching from both Opera and Arc to Zen Browser. To add a nice cherry on top, Zen Browser is (unlike either Opera or Arc) open-source. 

Zen Browser is free to use and installable on Linux, MacOS, and Windows.  

Best for: Those who value efficiency, beauty, and open-source.

4. Safari

Safari finally got smart and added a tab management feature that is somewhat similar to Opera’s. Safari’s workspaces feature isn’t quite as refined as Opera’s (it functions more like vertical sidebar tabs than anything), but it gets the job done. Of the four browsers on this list, Safari’s workspaces feature is the weakest. But it’s there and quite user-friendly. 

Also: My 5 favorite web browsers – and what each is ideal for

Safari’s workspaces feature functions via a drop-down near the upper-left corner of the browser window, but you can also open the sidebar, where you’ll get access to pinning tabs to workspaces and the ability to move a workspace to a different profile. By making use of profiles, you can assign specific extensions, set a theme, and configure how new windows and tabs open. Although you might not have nearly the customization of workspaces/profiles found in Arc, Safari does a decent job with this.

Best for: MacOS users who need better tab management but would rather stick with the default browser.