Discussion
Your Neglected Browser Tabs Grow a Jungle You Have to Cut Back...
Every browser tab you stop looking at now grows a jungle, and the only way back into the page is to cut through it with your mouse. Charlie Gerard, a senior research engineer and creative technologist, built Overgrown as a Chrome extension that does exactly that, and her repository keeps the pitch to one line: plants invade your abandoned tabs the longer you leave them unread.
@OliviaVespera @Bluedepth yeah, there's no way I could afford this custom otherwise. :)
@ChrisPirillo @Bluedepth
Thank you for the clarity!
it's very beautiful, and I want to share your post, but I can't do that if it includes art made with AI.
@ChrisPirillo Can i ask who create this stitch?
@ChrisPirillo
Damn cute idea but what the world really needs is something that infests forgotten opened browser windows. There are a lot of people who still don't know how to use tabs.
@ChrisPirillo and as a bonus you can free up a bunch of ram to give to sam altman
The mechanic is a neglect clock that runs while a tab is out of view and stops while you're looking at it, so the jungle only grows on pages you're not reading. Past 5% coverage, the page behind the plants can't be used. You take it back by slashing through the vines with your mouse (the repo compares it to trying to open an overgrown door), and you choose your weapon: a rusty machete, a chainsaw or a flamethrower.
Gerard's own tab bar is the best advertising.
On a brand-new computer, she counts what she calls "only" 22 tabs open, and 14 of them are already completely overgrown.
On Hacker News, where it pulled 394 points and 131 comments, the room is torn between "This is so useless yet so cool!" and a defender calling it "a visual representation of how old the tab is." Both readings hold up, and the extension works either way.
If your tab bar is a to-do list you keep lying about, install Overgrown from its GitHub repository and let the vines keep score. If that sounds like too much ceremony, close ten tabs right now and see how many you actually reopen. I know which way this goes for me, because my tab bar would be a rainforest by Friday.
The jungle never lies about what you meant to read later.
@ChrisPirillo @Bluedepth Can i ask who create this stitch? Was it made with AI?