poptab

A CLI tool and library to clean up specific browser tabs.

Overview

This is a trivial CLI tool to close browser tabs whose URLs contain a given URL string.

I use it in a few projects to clean up the stale tabs that tend to accumulate during development sessions.

By default, poptab is silent: it prints nothing on success, failure, or unsupported platforms, and exits 0. Pass --verbose to surface status messages, and --strict to fail hard with a non-zero exit code. This makes poptab safe to drop into cross-platform package.json scripts without cluttering output.

Getting started

Dependencies

The poptab CLI tool requires Node 20.19.0+. The exported APIs are ESM-only and share the Node 20.19.0+ requirement. Poptab is implemented in TypeScript and bundles type definitions.

It can close tabs in Chromium, Chrome, or Safari

The implementation relies on macOS-specific scripting capabilities. On Linux and Windows it is a no-op.

Installation

Invoke directly:

npx poptab

Or, install locally to access the CLI commands in a single project or to import the provided APIs:

npm install poptab

Or, install globally for access across your system:

npm install --global poptab

Or, install the CLI tool globally with Homebrew:

brew install kitschpatrol/tap/poptab

Usage

Most often, it ends up in a package.json script, e.g.:

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "poptab && vite dev"
  }
}

By default, poptab will close tabs in an open Chromium browser containing //localhost:.

Also by default, loopback hosts are treated as interchangeable: if the URL string includes localhost, 127.0.0.1, [::1], or 0.0.0.0, tabs matching any of the others are closed too. So the default match also catches tabs like http://127.0.0.1:3000. Pass --no-equivalent-hosts (or equivalentHosts: false) to match the URL string exactly.

Library

import { popTab } from 'poptab'

const closedTabs = await popTab({
  browser: 'chrome',
  urlContains: '127.0.0.1:',
})

console.log(`Closed ${closedTabs} tab(s)`)

CLI

Command: poptab

Close browser tabs containing a given URL string.

Usage:

poptab

| Option | Description | Type | Default | | ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- | ---------------- | | --browser-b | Browser to target for tab cleanup | "chromium" "chrome" "safari" | "chromium" | | --url-contains-u | String that tab URLs must contain to be closed | string | "//localhost:" | | --equivalent-hosts-e | Treat loopback hosts (localhost, 127.0.0.1, [::1], 0.0.0.0) as interchangeable when matching tab URLs. Pass --no-equivalent-hosts to match the URL string exactly. | boolean | true | | --strict-s | Exit with a non-zero status code on failure. Default is to exit cleanly so poptab can be safely chained in scripts (e.g. poptab && next-command). | boolean | false | | --verbose | Print status messages (successes, skips, and errors). Default is silent so poptab does not clutter script output. | boolean | false | | --help-h | Show help | boolean | | | --version-v | Show version number | boolean | |

Implementation notes

Other projects of interest:

• better-opn AppleScript approach. Eponymous NPM package seems sketchy / abandoned.
• kill-tabs This kills the processes instead of closing actual tabs.
• open-in-browser-tab Pairs with a browser extension.

Maintainers

kitschpatrol

Contributing

Issues are welcome and appreciated.

Please open an issue to discuss changes before submitting a pull request. Unsolicited PRs (especially AI-generated ones) are unlikely to be merged.

This repository uses @kitschpatrol/shared-config (via its ksc CLI) for linting and formatting, plus MDAT for readme placeholder expansion.

License

MIT © Eric Mika