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?

  • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
    5·
    11 hours ago

    Simple.

    1. I’m reading tab A
    2. Tab A links to tab B
    3. Open B in new tab, since I know I’m going back to tab A soon.
    4. Go to tab A
    5. Go to tab B again
    6. I’m finished reading tab B so I close it.

    Notice how I didn’t close tab A. Because at that point, I was not in tab A, therefore I don’t think about that tab much so I don’t even think if I should close it or not. Tab A will probably stay open until I decide to clean my tabs when there are 50+ tabs on them.

    Another common scenario:

    1. I’m reading tab C
    2. Something comes up that makes me either switch to another task or shut down the computer

    From this point there are 2 paths: either I never resume the task I opened tab C for, so it stays there for a long time, or I resume the task when tab C is too far up (I use vertical tabs), so I open tab D that is the same webpage as tab C. When I finish I close tab D, but tab C remains for a long time.

    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      It sounds like you do close tabs, but they also tend to accumulate over time anyway. It’s actually quite familiar to me that paths fork all the time, which can result in exponential growth of the tab count. Ok, so that should cover where all the tabs come from.

      But why do you keep them as tabs as opposed to unloading them to any other “read it later” feature? People have proposed a variety of solutions in this thread, but some people still have their reasons to stick with tabs instead.

      • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 hours ago

        Bookmarks are even harder to clear than tabs, since they are more “long term”. furthermore, they require more effort. Opening and closing a tab is 1 click each. Bookmarks take 1 click to create at least, but 2 to delete at least.

        The browser history requires a lot of effort to find what you want.

        Basically I use tabs because they require less effort than any other method.