--- title: Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs description: A Chrome extension grows virtual plants over browser tabs the longer they sit unread. Each tab has a neglect clock that runs only while it's out of view. Past... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/overgrown-when-plants-invade-your-abandoned-tabs-lcjc84dxn twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs | daily.dev og:description: A Chrome extension grows virtual plants over browser tabs the longer they sit unread. Each tab has a neglect clock that runs only while it's out of view. Past... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/overgrown-when-plants-invade-your-abandoned-tabs-lcjc84dxn og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/lCjC84dXn.png og:image:alt: Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A Chrome extension grows virtual plants over browser tabs the longer they sit unread. Each tab has a neglect clock that runs only while it's out of view. Past 5% overgrowth, the tab locks: you can scroll but not click, select or drag until you slash the vines by dragging your mouse across them. You can choose a machete, chainsaw or flamethrower as your weapon and adjust how fast tabs overgrow. The code splits into a background worker, a popup UI and a content script handling the SVG plants and animations. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How does the Overgrown Chrome extension decide when a tab is too neglected to use? Each tab has a neglect clock that runs only while the tab is out of view and pauses while you're looking at it. As neglect accumulates, plants grow inward from the edges, and once a tab passes 5% overgrowth it locks: you can still scroll but can't click, select, or drag anything until you slash through the vines by dragging your mouse across them. _daily.dev surfaces creative coding projects like this for developers who build fun browser tools in their spare time._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 71 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-26). **TL;DR:** Commenters find the tab-plant idea charming and well-executed, with many relating it to their own tab hoarding habits, while a vocal minority questions its practical usefulness and debates whether tabs, bookmarks, or history are the better way to save things for later. **Sentiment:** 45% positive · 40% mixed · 15% skeptical **The case for** - Several see it as a clever visual proxy for how stale a tab is, helping distinguish active from forgotten tabs. - Some think the neglect mechanic could usefully train people to close old tabs. - Many simply enjoy it as a fun, whimsical project, comparing it fondly to nostalgic desktop toys like sheep.exe. - People appreciated the playful weapon choices (machete, chainsaw, flamethrower) as a fun touch. **The pushback** - Some argue it's impractical or even actively annoying/frustrating rather than useful. - Several note they keep tabs open intentionally for memory/resource or legacy reasons, so the premise of 'neglect' doesn't apply to them. - A few prefer alternatives like tab suspenders, tab groups, or browser history/bookmarks instead of letting tabs pile up. - One comparison raises concern that cutesy browser add-ons have historically been vectors for spyware/adware. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Overall fondness for the idea's cleverness and humor is balanced by practical skepticism and a long tangential debate over tabs vs. bookmarks vs. browser history. **Hottest debate:** Whether open tabs are a legitimate, sometimes long-term organizational tool or just neglected clutter that should become bookmarks or history instead. **Open questions** - Will the overgrowth coverage percentage be made adjustable so pages don't become fully obscured? - Will the extension be ported to work on Firefox or other non-Chromium browsers? - Could an option be added to fully block closing/interacting with overgrown tabs until cleared? **Highlights** > This isn’t as useless as it seems. It is a visual representation of how old the tab is. And I control what “old” is. To put it another way, it helps me recognize which tabs I am using. And which I am saving for later without having to evaluate the content of the tab. One tweak… the coverage percentage can it be adjustable? Max = 100% looses all information about the pages contents, except the title. Also also… if the images can be made translucent… you can make old timey effects like yellowing and decay. > — [drfloyd51 on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236483) > If you have tabs sitting there unused for days, isn't that just a bookmark? > — [zetanor on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236938) > I'm one of those people. I have serious ADHD and I often dive a rabbit hole for an idea for side project. Or research. Or combination of both. Most of my side projects you could categorize as spikes. There's no serious intent on delivering something of value for the world, just going from A to B and learning a thing or two on the run. I'm like kerosene, I light up instantly, but the fire goes away very quickly. I can be researching a thing for 3 nights straight in my spare time to gather hooks and pieces of information... and then I get distracted and my focus goes somewhere else. And I'm left with 10 tabs that were suppose to kick start my idea. To my own surprise I tend to go back to these ideas, but sometimes it takes me months, and sometimes, I keep these tabs on one of my devices, opened for months at a time. Sometimes I scrape them, adding links with notes to Obsidian. Of course the amount of hoarded information vastly exceeds my throughput. > — [zeroq on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237543) > I don't think any browsers are really designed for the range of how many tabs people keep open. I also wonder what the distribution does really look like. Just on my primary profile here I felt like I was making progress trying to get it to under 2000 tabs recently. It feels like a hopeless battle though. Across multiple machines and browsers and browser profiles i'd reckon i'm stuck at like 12,000 open tabs. > — [jdprgm on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50239103) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy "BonziBuddy was described as spyware[1] and adware,[2] and was discontinued in 2004 after Bonzi Software, Inc. faced lawsuits and fines regarding the software.[3]" It's just a matter of time before something like a "Zoltar screensaver for Basecamp" becomes an IP siphon. > — [itomato on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237489) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50197108) · 193 points · 71 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [All of my 300\+ browser tabs are beautiful—zachleat.com](https://daily.dev/posts/all-of-my-300-browser-tabs-are-beautiful-zachleat-com-rv5rkbjcm) · Zach Leatherman · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [I gave Chrome's vertical tabs a week, and going back to tabs across the top feels wrong](https://daily.dev/posts/i-gave-chrome-s-vertical-tabs-a-week-and-going-back-to-tabs-across-the-top-feels-wrong-orcytpsyc) · XDA Developers · 4 upvotes · 2 comments - [Google Chrome may soon block New Tab hijacker extensions by default](https://daily.dev/posts/google-chrome-may-soon-block-new-tab-hijacker-extensions-by-default-f9dyqmo2r) · BleepingComputer · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Amazing Refresh — A Malicious Chrome Extension Running Malware in the Browser](https://daily.dev/posts/amazing-refresh-a-malicious-chrome-extension-running-malware-in-the-browser-jlxakhzub) · Scott Helme · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#javascript](https://daily.dev/tags/javascript), [#devtools](https://daily.dev/tags/devtools), [#svg](https://daily.dev/tags/svg), [#creative-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/creative-coding) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/overgrown-when-plants-invade-your-abandoned-tabs-lcjc84dxn) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/overgrown-when-plants-invade-your-abandoned-tabs-lcjc84dxn","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/overgrown-when-plants-invade-your-abandoned-tabs-lcjc84dxn"},"datePublished":"2026-10-25T22:43:38.386Z","dateModified":"2026-10-26T04:29:42.190Z","description":"A Chrome extension grows virtual plants over browser tabs the longer they sit unread. 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As neglect accumulates, plants grow inward from the edges, and once a tab passes 5% overgrowth it locks: you can still scroll but can't click, select, or drag anything until you slash through the vines by dragging your mouse across them. daily.dev surfaces creative coding projects like this for developers who build fun browser tools in their spare time."}}]} ```