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?
They can’t organise bookmarks
For me it is not about being unable to organise them but once it is bookmarked it is basically gone from my sight and memory.
I am 33 years old (so not a new internet user) and I somehow feel bookmarks need a redesign… Not exactly sure how I’d improve it (tags, AI grouping? Daily bookmark to see section? I don’t really know) but if the site I have saved doesn’t show up in the FF search bar… It might as well be lost forever (and that feature is case sensitive).
Yep, same. I should research solutions to this problem with a bunch of new tabs.
This. If I spend the time organizing them, I’ve spent more time on the tab than I originally wanted to, but didn’t end up taking care of what the original reason I have the tab opened was.
In my case, bookmarking things is something I do to remove it from my sight and memory, but not lose it entirely.
I want to ask genuinely, how is the bookmark different than a tab with tab grouping in this instance? I have the bookmarks bar always visible, and have folders organized on the main bar (rather than the drop down extended bar). Wouldn’t tab grouping do the same thing, just slightly higher?
It probably is functionally not too different. I have the bookmark bar open but I mostly have all the sites I regularly go to there. Additionally, I have thousands of bookmarks from many years so wading through them for something I briefly saw and was interested in last week but can’t remember enough detail on to find isn’t very fun or easy. And where do I look for it? One bookmark could be categorised in many ways so I also have to remember where I saved it. Tags are good but I have too many for that to be very useful or quick.
I do use grouping as well, and I really like it, but this just causes me to have even more tabs because there is less pressure to trim down the endless list since I can hide them.
Bookmarks bar.
Yes, and?
There’s no reason not to use it instead of having a million tabs open.
Bold of you assume that it is not being used.
Same problem as bookmarks.
That takes time and effort, which most people don’t have. Most links don’t deserve that much of my energy, so that’s why I have only a handful of sites bookmarked. Everything else is chucked in the infinitely growing trash pile known as “history”.
It really doesn’t. There is literally a star next to the URL in the URL bar that you click once
Yeah, but keeping them organized in sensible folders takes effort. If you just throw bookmarks into an enormous trash pile, it gets hard to find stuff. Some sites just have weird names and you can’t find them unless they’re sorted into reasonable folders.
If you’re looking for color themes, you won’t find Paletton. If you’re looking for synonyms, you won’t find Visuwords. The list goes on and on.
You don’t need to keep them organized, mine certainly aren’t. Just throw them on the bookmarks bar and it will always be under your URL bar, just not in a freaking tab
Unorganized bookmarks tend to be a lot less useful compared to open tabs once you do actually go back to them. I already organized my tabs when I opened them.
Yeah, that should work too. What if you want to find that one article you almost read few months ago? Yes, that one about the history of cat memes. It’s in the bookmark pile, right? Is it still possible to find it today?
URL bar searches your bookmarks, or open the bookmark manager and search there
My bookmarks are organized. Haven’t used any of them in 10 years.
It’s a great idea that I like, it just doesn’t work for me.
Tabs in the sidebar do.