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?

  • TryingSomethingNew@sopuli.xyz
    81·
    6 hours ago

    I typically have 100-200. It’s usually a “let me come back to this in a day or three”, which may or may not happen. Or a thread of “doing research on a topic” and then getting pulled to something else, but not having time to summarize/organize for later. Plus, as others have mentioned, sometimes you need the tab session history.

    I really appreciate y’all saying what a monster or computer illiterate I am, though. Don’t tell my boss, she’ll wonder what I do all day.

    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      2·
      6 hours ago

      Hmm… The “lemmy get back to that” feeling is familiar, especially the second part where you never actually do.

      Back when I had a hundred neatly organized bookmarks, there were several links like that. Some site seemed like a neat tool or an interesting article, but I never actually ended up revisiting that site. Fast forward 10 years, and I start going through all of those bookmarks to see which ones are actually worth keeping. That’s when I find out that more than half of those sites don’t even exist any more.

      Nowadays, I’m better at letting go of digital things and discarding useless junk. My current bookmark list consists of sites I actually use frequently enough to appreciate the shortcut.