kill-tabs

The tool provides a command‑line interface that terminates the processes associated with open browser tabs in Chrome, Chromium, Chrome Canary, Brave, and Edge on macOS, Linux, and Windows. By killing these tab processes, it frees the memory and CPU resources they were consuming, allowing the browser window to remain open while the individual tabs appear as crashed and can be reloaded when needed.

It is distributed as an npm package that can be installed globally for CLI use or locally as a library, where the function can be invoked programmatically to achieve the same effect. The CLI accepts flags to exclude specific browsers, giving users control over which tabs are affected.

The utility targets developers or power users who experience high resource usage from many open tabs and want a quick way to clear them without closing the entire browser instance. It operates without requiring additional extensions, though a separate “Reload All Tabs” extension can be used to restore the closed tabs.