Perch: Your Chrome tabs, scored.

Perch is a macOS menu-bar app built with Tauri v2 and Rust. It monitors your Chrome tabs through a local WebSocket extension, scores each tab against four staleness rules — Zombie, Duplicate, Stale, and Domain pileup — and shows a ranked list of tabs worth closing. Everything stays on your machine, with no account required.

20% of a tab manager. The part you'd actually use.

I keep ~180 Chrome tabs open. I'm not proud of it. Most tab managers either suspend memory or bury everything in a sidebar I never open. I wanted something smaller: a number in the menu bar, and an honest answer to "which of these can I close?"

Perch watches your tabs and tracks how much time you spend on each one — but only while Chrome is focused and you're not idle, so background tabs don't pad the numbers. Then it flags the ones that look closeable.

Each suggestion shows why it's flagged. Tabs you genuinely use a lot get demoted, not nagged. You close from the panel; the tab disappears in Chrome.

At the top, a single Health number sums all of that into one glanceable score — click it to see exactly how it's worked out.

• Stale — you haven't touched it in a day.
• Zombie — opened hours ago, never once looked at.
• Duplicate — the same page open in three tabs.
• Domain pileup — eleven GitHub tabs, again.

Six views. One panel.

Worth-closing list

Every flagged tab with its reasons, ranked by score. The "Nuke all" button closes the lot in one shot. Each tab shows why it was flagged — Duplicate, Stale, Zombie, or Domain pileup — so nothing is a surprise.

All tabs — grouped, sortable, searchable

Every open tab across every window, grouped by domain. Sort by last active, active time, or domain. A "Close all N" button beside each domain closes the whole cluster at once. Search filters by title or URL.

Windows view

Tabs organized by Chrome window, collapsible. Windows with a high proportion of flagged tabs get a "Recommended to close" badge. Focus a window or close it entirely — one click.

Playing — only what makes sound

A dedicated view that lists only tabs currently playing audio. The moment you hear an unexpected sound, one look tells you exactly which tab it is.

History + restore

Recently-closed tabs listed with domain and time. One click restores any of them, Chrome-style. Accidentally nuked something? It's here.

Stats — where your time goes

Lifetime tabs closed ("reclaimed") and a bar chart of active time by domain — only time while Chrome was focused and you weren't idle. The honest picture of what you use.

Two reasons, honestly.

Two processes, one loopback.

Chrome ──tabs/windows/idle──▶ MV3 extension (the sensor)
                                   │  loopback WebSocket (127.0.0.1)
                                   ▼
                         Tauri app (the brain + UI)
                          ├─ local SQLite
                          ├─ time attributor
                          ├─ close-suggestion heuristics
                          └─ AppleScript fallback (when extension drops)
                                   │
                                   ▼
                            menu-bar panel

One number. Transparent maths.

Health answers a single question: what share of your open tabs are worth closing? It's three steps, all visible.

The formula

100 means nothing is flagged. Lower means a bigger slice of what's open is clutter. No tabs open at all → Health 100. Clamped to 0–100.

• Example — 180 tabs open, 36 flagged worth closing → 100 − round(36 / 180 × 100) = 100 − 20 = Health 80

Health = 100 − round( worth_closing / open_tabs × 100 )

Score each tab against four rules

Every open, non-pinned tab is checked against four rules. Rules stack — a tab can trip several, and the weights add up. Pinned tabs are skipped entirely.

• Zombie — Opened over 2h ago and never once focused (+1.5)
• Duplicate — The same page (normalized URL) is already open in another tab (+1.2)
• Stale — No focus for over 24h (+1.0)
• Domain pileup — More than 8 tabs on one domain (counts the overflow) (+1.0)

Demote the tabs you actually use

A raw rule score isn't the final word. Perch keeps lifetime active-time per URL locally, and uses it to demote pages you genuinely live in — so your daily drivers don't get nagged just for sitting open.

The more you've actually used a URL over its lifetime, the lower the multiplier — down to a floor of 0.4×. A page you've never touched keeps its full score (1.0×).

multiplier = 1 − 0.6 × ( engagement / (1 + engagement) )
final_score = raw_score × multiplier

Count what crosses the line

A tab is worth closing when its final score clears the threshold (default > 1.0). Deliberately tuned so a single soft signal on a page you use a lot won't trip it — but a never-opened zombie (1.5), or a couple of stacked reasons, will.

What it's built with

I didn't write most of this code. I directed it.

Here's the short version: I built Perch by directing AI agents against frozen contracts, and the discipline mattered more than the speed. Letting an agent "just build the app" gives you mush. What worked was treating it like running a small engineering team — a spec first, then parallel agents, then real use until it broke.

My job wasn't typing. It was scoping the problem, deciding the open questions, keeping the contracts honest, and using the thing until it broke. The agents are fast; the discipline is what keeps the output coherent.

Frequently asked questions about building Perch

Worth knowing before you run it.

stack

• Tauri v2
• Rust
• macOS only, tray icon, no dock
• Chrome MV3
• tabs
• idle
• alarms
• no host access
• loopback WebSocket
• 127.0.0.1 only
• origin-checked
• SQLite (rusqlite)
• local-only
• parameterized queries
• Vanilla TypeScript
• Vite
• light/dark system-matched
• 65 unit tests
• security audit
• MIT licensed