I’ve always had too many browser windows open. Juggling them made it hard to actually work. So I sat down, found the pattern behind the mess, and fixed it. Along the way, I even built a small app.
The problem, with data
After a work session, here’s what I’d usually find open:
- One big window with all my active work.
- A couple of smaller windows I’d forgotten to close: research and docs I only needed once.
- A handful of one-tab windows: a random Google search, a ChatGPT chat, directions to a weekend plan, and so on.
On its own, that doesn’t sound too bad. But I had two profiles, work and personal, so every bit of it was doubled.
Finding the pattern
I sat down with a notebook and started sorting my tabs by hand. A pattern showed up fast: everything fell into a 2x2 grid. Logged in or logged out. One-off or not. And all of it repeated across both profiles.
Once I saw the shape of the problem, I went looking for tools that already solved it. I found a few good ones.
What I found
Dia Browser automatically groups deep navigation trails into tabs, something I’d never bother doing by hand.
I also noticed a smaller pattern: a handful of sites, a dashboard, a chat, a quick reference, stayed open all day just so I could glance at them now and then. Each one was tying up a full browser window for something that only needed a corner of the screen. So I built a small app called Peek. It pins any URL as a floating widget, sized like an iPhone screen so the mobile layout looks right, always on top, and stays put between sessions.
It also refreshes itself on a timer, so dashboards and chats stay live without me ever switching to their tab. Most of the time, there’s no tab to switch to in the first place.
The final setup
Last, I split work and personal into two separate browsers instead of two profiles in one browser: personal lives in Brave, work lives in Dia. There’s also a third one that doesn’t fit the 2x2 at all: a plain Chrome that’s never logged into anything, shared by both sides of my life. That’s where logged-out browsing goes, and it’s also where I point Claude and other browser MCPs. That way, an agent poking around the web can’t stumble onto an authenticated session or leak anything of mine.
Four small apps now, instead of one browser buried in windows. But I always know exactly where to look.
More on Peek: /projects/peek.