Why do some people have so many tabs open on their browser?

Comments

• MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It’s a to do list

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  • cRazi_man@europe.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Hard to explain that tab I’ve had open for 8 months for something I’ve been meaning to read.

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    • wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Rookie numbers

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    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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.

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    • Zaphod@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I usually just bookmark after a few weeks. Might come back to it in a few year

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  • Saapas@piefed.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I feel like actual to-do list and actual read-it-later thing would be better for those. Or just bookmarks

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    • MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I have those too…

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    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Firefox has that pocket thing. Could be worth a try.

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  • serpineslair@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Fair enough, for that purpose I use either an actual list, or bookmarks.

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    • MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Oh, I have those too!

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• Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Not all disabilities are visible.

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  • meejle@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This may or may not be a joke, but yes, this is very often talked about among ADHDers!

    I’m AuDHD and thankfully this is one area where my ordered, autistic side wins out – i.e. I have meticulously organised bookmarks and “Raindrop” tags for everything instead. 😄 I couldn’t stand having tons of tabs open.

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    • Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      AuDHD

      Intrusive thought when I first read that, “Gold tier ADHD!”

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  • karashta@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    So much this. My one monitor is basically nothing but tabs open to remind me to do things like pay my bills.

    And tabs with internet searches so I know what I was thinking of doing.

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Ouch! That’s pretty brutal.😀

    Next time I see someone with too many tabs, I’ll think of that line.

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  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’ll grant you that, but are you implying that a large fraction, maybe close to half, of my coworkers are disabled? Surely there are other reasons.

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• Steve@communick.news ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  When I asked someone, they basically used them like bookmarks.

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  • bufalo1973@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    More like a “level 1 bookmarks”.

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  • witty_username@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I use them as a sort of bookmark cache. Stood I’m unlikely to want to keep for long but also not stuff I want to discard immediately. I use the tree style tabs plugin in ff, works beautifully

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    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Just tried that extension, and it’s pretty cool. Might actually keep it.

      Also tried OneTab which condenses open tabs into a single list of links. Could be ideal for people who always need more RAM.

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  • IceFoxX@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    For people who are overwhelmed by tidying up (or can’t find anything afterwards xD) or managing bookmarks. So they simply use a chaotic system.

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Interesting. I get it that making bookmarks takes some effort, so it’s easier to just ignore that system and use tabs instead. If you have hundreds of tabs open, how can you find anything? I just use the history of Firefox to find old stuff. The search feature actually works. Just sort by date and you can find that news article you almost read two months go.

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    • Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Firefox actually searches tabs first when you enter something into the adress bar and switches to the tab automatically when you press enter.

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    • Deceptichum@quokk.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      My history has thousands of results, my tabs don’t.

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    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I split the tabs into multiple windows by category, personally (tho firefox’s tab grouping is pretty great too). And it’s more about it being present - bookmarks are fine, but if I am not actively reminded of something I likely will just forget about it entirely.

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• rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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, which helps a lot with keeping down resource use.

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  • lime@feddit.nu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

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  • phed@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That is very interesting. I should probably try that automatic tab management thing. Any recommendations?

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• mriormro@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Image

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• owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  My wife calls them her emotional support tabs.

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  • pleasestopasking@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yes, exactly. But also when I have to force quit my browser and it asks me if I want to reopen the tabs, I immediately click no. It’s like I’ve been released from an evil wizard’s curse. Then I can start a fresh tab hoard.

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• agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I will come back to it eventually, when the time is right.

  It’s not important enough to bookmark, it’s not urgent enough to get to right now, but it’s too interesting to ignore entirely. When the time is right for a tab, I will return to it. Sometimes I scroll through them to jog my memory. Sometimes I’ll decide it wasn’t as interesting as I thought and delete it.

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That’s sort of like the “watch later” feature in YouTube. Hey, wasn’t Firefox Pocket meant to be like that?

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    • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The problem with Pocket is that it’s out of sight. That’s like writing yourself a reminder note and putting it in a box under your bed. It also doesn’t maintain tab groups, so a collection of tabs will get scattered and messy.

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• DrBob@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  ADHD.

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  • datavoid@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Overly the last year or so I’ve become entirely convinced I have developed ADHD. Is it possible to concuss yourself into ADHD?

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    • ada@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It is possible to develop ADHD like symptoms from a TBI of some kind. It’s not ADHD from a technical definition standpoint, but from lived experience of symptoms, it can line up with ADHD

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    • Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      No, but life style changes may reveal you had ADHD all along and had just been lucky enough to be unaffected by it.

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Surprisingly many people have brought that up. Probably not a coincidence. Maybe that’s the thing I didn’t think of.

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    • Berengaria_of_Navarre@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      People with ADHD (I speak from experience) have shitty working memory, poor organisational skills, are easily distracted, and a tendancy to procrasate.

      Therefore you start researching something for work/uni (4tabs) I’ll come back to that after a little YouTube break (+3tabs) I’ll watch those videos later I need to get back to work (+4 tabs that are duplicates of the first 4). Time for home, when do I need to catch the bus (+1) and the first 12 tabs will just stay open till the next day because you know you won’t remember what you were doing.

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• A7thStone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Have you seen the price of RAM lately? You gotta do something to make sure you’re getting your moneys worth.

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  • kratoz29@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    LMAO, as a light “desktop/laptop” user I agree, if it wasn’t for tab hoarding I’d never hit 90% or more of the RAM usage of my 16 GB of RAM MacBook Pro that I have been maining since 2014 😂

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Saw a Loops video about it. Other than that, I have no idea.

    Anyway, you can always just download more ram.

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• howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  but once I’m done, I close them all

  Same. But I also have a continuous stream of new projects that never get finished.

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    When I have a lot of unfinished things going on, they begin to bother me. I need to close things and start from a clean slate. Doesn’t that bother you at all?

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    • howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Oh, so much. I’m still trying to figure out how to actually complete things.

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• YetAnotherNerd@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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• zephiriz@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You know when you make a sandwich or some buttered toast and you set the knife carefully on the edge of the sink. Well because you might decided to make another sandwich latter or your SO goes that looks good can I get one too. And bam your the hero because you now have one less knife to clean in the dishwasher.

  That is why I have so many tabs open. I know I probably won’t need most of them and it’s safe to close them. But oh dang do I feel like a hero when I get that itch for a video I want to watch and I don’t have to look through my history for next 20 minutes because, bam, its right their in that tab.

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  • Lag@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Especially at work when you might need a combination of those 3 tabs from last month.

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    • zephiriz@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Shhh. I was mainly talking about porn… But yes that works too. 😏

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That’s a pretty good analogy.

    There are some YT playlists I visit every now and then. Maybe I should just keep them open all the time…

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• Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I suspect they lack whatever visceral reaction makes me start to panic if I have more tabs open than fit neatly across the top of the browser.

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  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Extensions like Tree Style Tabs that display tabs as a vertical list are really good for that, especially if they also let you group the tabs in collapsible sublists.

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I have that sort of desire for order too. Seems to come with anxiety when seeing a pile of tabs spiraling out of control. So far, that set of traits have served me well, but some people are clearly built different. Maybe they’re immune to chaos.

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    • Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Oh, I like chaos fine. With me it’s… fear of loss? I have to close all unnecessary tabs myself so I don’t lose track of and accidentally close the few important ones.

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• RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Those are fucking rookie numbers.

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Even those 500 tabs in mobile Safari?

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    • RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Anyone that uses Safari isn’t serious about browsing. ;p

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• pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Uhhh because I need it

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    All 500 of them?

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    • pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Maybe not now but I will need them eventually

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• Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Because I want to and it’s weird that it bothers you.

  Let’s explore that instead.

  What allows you to assume you’re not the abnormal one?

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I have no reason to assume that my way of doing thins is better than any other. I just know what works for me, and that doesn’t mean some other way should’t work for someone else.

    Based on what I’ve seen, most people seem to have a rather small number of tabs open, while a smaller group of people like to do the exact opposite. That’s not a tiny minority though. Maybe something like 10-20% approximately. Since that many people do things in a completely different way, I got curious as to why that is.

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• reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  its kind of “log”, so i dont forget about some website or it displays what i have been doing earlier. Kind of temporary bookmark

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yeah, that seems like a good way to use tabs.

    However, eventually they have a tendency to accumulate and fill the entire tab bar to such an extent that you can no longer even see the names. Some people like to roll that way, and I’m trying to figure out what’s going with that.

    Some people don’t let them accumulate much, but others do. The key difference seems to be how often do you close the tabs. If you close them rarely enough that you still have 100+ tabs open all the time, that’s the kind of situation I have questions about.

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    • reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      when i have had tons and tons of tabs open, it has been due to laziness and just not bothering to sort which tabs are useless to have around and which are not.

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• Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  For me it’s because I have ADHD and thrive among organized clutter.

  I may have 100 tabs open, but they’re all categorized: One tab group for YouTube, one for porn, one for my website, and one for everything else. I keep stuff in there that’s good enough to hang onto for a while, but not good enough to bookmark.

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  • twen@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Your way to manage you tabs is really close to managing bookmarks. It takes time and effort. And categorzing them goes against clutter ! What is your criteria to move a webpage to a bookmark ? I use bookmadks in the toolbar, so they are all accessible and well organized. They are not tab, just a list of pages in different folders (folder = tab group)

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    • Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The criteria is whatever I feel like at the moment if/when I ultimately decide to bookmark. There is no hard set rule, because again, I have ADHD.

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• EtherWhack@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  For me, it more boils down to keeping my place within a web page or ever-updating feed.

  For instance… If I’m going down a rabbit hole, I could have 4 root tabs open. Those tabs may have lengthy articles and would reference secondary sites throughout the page. Rather then having a good chance of the browser losing my place down the page by clicking on a link normally, I open it in a new tab. This allows me to switch to it, skim down to where it was referenced to understand that part of it, then switch back to the root tab while leaving the secondary tab open to fully read through when I finish with the root one. As the rabbit hole deepens, those secondary tabs may eventually become root tabs which may also reference their own secondary sites or even each other. The number of tabs just keeps growing until I either run out of those secondary tabs or I am just satisfied with the amount of info I gained. This can also happen over several days or weeks and have other rabbit holes open at the same time.

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• Deceptichum@quokk.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I often have 2-3 windows open of ~30 tabs each.

  It’s the floordrobe of internet management, small piles of shit when and where I need them scattered around.

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• Son_of_Macha@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  They can’t organise bookmarks

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• ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  ADHD.

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• zxqwas@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I can easily hit 30 tabs split roughly 5-10 tabs about the same topic and 3-5 topics going at the same time.

  There is about a weeks lag time from moving on from one topic to closing the tabs.

  I am never close to 100. I don’t even think there are 100 interesting pages on the Internet.

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• NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Bookmarks are where projects go to die.

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• gerryflap@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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

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• dosboy0xff@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I hate the default way most browsers handle tabs. Moved over to this setup years ago and I’m definitely never going back.

  Firefox plus either Sideberry or Tree Style Tabs - both will organize your tabs vertically along the side of the window in a tree format. Follow a link in a new tab, it opens up as a new branch under the current one.

  Pair that with Auto Tab Discard to keep memory usage down, and something like Open Link with New Tab to automatically open links across domains in a new child tab.

  Now I tend to just collapse trees of related tabs and further organize broad related subjects in windows.

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• AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I have close to 200. Every task I start has a new set of tabs. In theory I’ll complete them and work my way back through the stack

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• Strider@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  At work? Every shit is a browser app now. Hard to organize.

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• phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I easily hit 500+ tabs, usually against 1000 or so, and usually spread around over 40 windows on 4 different desktops, so it’s fairly wellp organized as all tabs in a window are about the same subject.

  Most auto close after about 15 mins to spare resources because websites these days just are insanely heavy. I used to do 2000 sites with maybe 32GB mem, now I need a tab auto closer to be able to manage half of that.

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• MurrayL@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The weirdest thing to me is how some people brag about how many tabs they have open as if it’s a competition. Like, it shouldn’t be a point of pride, it just shows you don’t know how to use bookmarks.

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