Best Browser Settings for People with ADHD Who Get Distracted by Tabs

For many people with ADHD, open tabs are open loops: each one is something half-started, and forty of them become constant background noise. Chrome has settings that make tabs calmer without forcing you to close everything.

Find tabs instead of scanning them

• Tab search: press Ctrl + Shift + A (Cmd + Shift + A on Mac) and type part of the title. No more hunting through tiny tab icons.
• Jump by number: Ctrl + 1 to 8 goes to that tab; Ctrl + 9 goes to the last one.

Group and hide

• Tab groups: right-click a tab → Add tab to new group, give it a name and color, then click the group name to collapse it. Out of sight, but not lost.
• One window per task: keep work in one window and personal browsing in another, so switching tasks is a choice.
• Pin the few tabs you always need (email, calendar) so they stay small and out of the way.

Save for later without keeping it open

• Reading list: open the bookmark menu or side panel and add the page to your Reading list. It's saved, and the tab can close.
• Bookmark all tabs: Ctrl + Shift + D saves every tab in the window into a folder.

Start fresh each day

In Settings → On startup, choose Open the New Tab page instead of "Continue where you left off". Yesterday's tabs don't come back to stare at you. Save anything important to the Reading list or bookmarks before you close.

Reduce interruptions

• Notifications: Settings → Privacy and security → Site settings → Notifications → Don't allow sites to send notifications, then allow only the ones you need.
• Mute noisy sites: right-click a tab → Mute site.
• Memory Saver (Settings → Performance) quietly frees inactive tabs, so a pile of tabs doesn't slow you down.

Let a tool do the tidying

Patrick Bushe's Tab Manager puts idle tabs to sleep, searches across all open tabs, and saves a set of tabs as a session you can reopen later, so you can clear a window without losing anything.

Reading what you opened

When you do sit down to read, ADHD Reading Focus shows one paragraph at a time, and Reading Progress Bar shows how much is left. For more, see the ADHD browser extension starter pack.