I just saw a coworker with something like 30 tabs open in Chrome. I also know someone who regularly hits the 500-tab limit on their phone, though I suspect that’s more about being messy than anything else.
When I’m researching something, I might have 10-50 tabs open for a while, but once I’m done, I close them all. If I need them again, browser history is there.
Why do people keep so many tabs open? Is there a workflow or habit I’m missing? Do they just never clean up, or is there a real benefit to tab hoarding? I’m genuinely curious. Why do people do that?
Because, shockingly, not everyone sees the world the way you do.
Why do people consider the way others do things as flawed, or pathologize the behaviours of others?
Also, browser history is awful.
I am reading a text and there’s a link in it, that I want to follow up. But first I want to finish the text, so I open the link in the background.
I wonder the same about people with hundreds of unread emails. Almost as if they don’t know that you can unsubscribe from newsletters.
I go through and unsub to stuff, but some keep coming back. Then I make a filter to delete them when they come.
When your inbox is a mess, email stops working for you. It’s impossible to find anything worth reading, so you end up reading nothing.
Same with notifications. If you allow all of them, it’s functionally the same as disabling the whole notification system.
It’s a to do list
I feel like actual to-do list and actual read-it-later thing would be better for those. Or just bookmarks
I have those too…
Firefox has that pocket thing. Could be worth a try.
RIP Pocket. I did use it for a time before it was killed, but I had moved to self-hosted solution (readeck) prior to it being killed.
Oh it died already? Haven’t been following the news on that. I just couldn’t figure out what it’s good for, so I simply ignored it.
It was around for a long time but pretty recently Mozilla decided to kill it
I used to love that shit in the iPod Touch web browsing days… But in the end it ended up being another tab hoarding container for me lol.
I push shit to read-it-later things all the time but even when I don’t read them I think it’s good. I don’t have the annoying tab clutter anymore and clearly it wasn’t that important if I haven’t ever gotten around to reading it
Fair enough, for that purpose I use either an actual list, or bookmarks.
Oh, I have those too!
Hard to explain that tab I’ve had open for 8 months for something I’ve been meaning to read.
Rookie numbers
I usually just bookmark after a few weeks. Might come back to it in a few years
CGP grey once spoke about those links on Cortex.
Instead of reading everything that seems important and interesting today, he just saves those links and gets back to them later. A few weeks later, he just ends up deleting most of that stuff anyway, because it wasn’t actually all that important.
Keeping them open keeps them more visible than if you only rely on bookmarks or browser history. Personally I use a browser extension for vertical tabs (Tree Style Tab) that allows you to make subgroups, which does a great job organizing the tabs - I could replicate something similar with bookmarks, but that would be additional work.
I also use an extension that automaticaly unloads tabs after a while (you can toggle it off on a per-tab basis, of course), which helps a lot with keeping down resource use.
you get it.
i tried using bookmark tags for a while but it’s just a lot of extra work.
that’s one thing firefox could actually improve with their insistence on pushing ai into everything: tag my bookmarks for me and allow searching through them by topic rather than title.
I have to refer to between 25-40 tabs to do my job at work, plus then there’s the stuff “to do” for today, stuff I just know is going to come up again or I’m actively tracking or referring to, etc.
At home I have several tabs I refer to or visit often, and then there’s the stuff I mean to follow up on, and the stuff I’m actively doing/reading.
That is very interesting. I should probably try that automatic tab management thing. Any recommendations?
porn? some people watch some embarrasing content that they dont want people seeing.
For me, it’s because of ADHD.
To combat this I installed 128GB of the fastest ram I could afford.
My computer still lags out after a week of never closing any tabs.
Most people I know who do that use them as kinda bookmarks. Tbh, I do also sort of do this on my phone. I keep some tabs open with stuff I still wanted to check out. And every now and then I go through them and close the ones I don’t need. But on PC I just close the whole session with all tabs when I’m done
Idk it’s crazy to see the browser windows of some teammates during screen share.
Read the thing, write down the relevant stuff / copy it to reference notes, bookmark it with raindrop or something that allows you to tag for context, close the whole browser.
I keep tabs open so I can refer back to them when working on stuff or when I am planning things.
Right now I’m in the middle of house repairs on a former slumlord property. Will be installing 7.2KW of solar panels in a system that can island without causing issues. Need to rip and replace the back porch because the roof was rotten already and the floor is not much better. Trying to run and build a YouTube channel in the SCUBA diving niche. Planning for a dive trip to Cozumel in April so I can get more footage for said channel. And trying to start a non-profit that will support SCUBA training for teens and young adults who survived childhood abuse. While also running a website for the YouTube channel and the non-profit. All while dealing with life, family, a dog, and two vehicles. I do EVERYTHING with my own hands because I don’t have cash to pay others to do it for me.
When I am preparing to make a purchase I also tend to have even more tabs open as I compare prices and costs for shipping among other things. The replacement materials for our roof was about 5K total for just under 3000sq ft of roof and I had to install venting that previously didn’t exist. Just made the next to last purchase for solar and have 6500 invested and about 1000 left to go for the racking and a few miscellaneous things.
It takes a lot to remember everything so keeping tabs open is a huge stress reliever. Right now my desktop has about 80 tabs open and my tablet has 230.
the windows of siracusa county
No idea. I close tabs as soon as I’m done. Also private tab by default
Too stupid to use bookmarks.
People have that many tabs open for the same reason people have full piss bottles next to their computers.
At about 10 I start questioning things. You’ll either forget what the tab was about so it wasn’t important, and if it is important, well, you found it somehow in the first place, you’ll find it again.
“Close tabs to the right” and we’re done.
