Ask HN: Your browser tab count

OMFG ! I never really understood this or the use of all those tab managers [1]. For me, Tabs are just links. Why do you have to keep them open? Can't you just bookmark them ? (and then delete them later)

[1] https://alternativeto.net/feature/tab-manager/?sort=likes

deafpolygon2• 4 years ago

I thought this way at first, but I'm discovering the value of opening tabs and coming back to them later, as I'm reading. I try to stay focused on what I'm reading without following links, so a middle-click and move on. Then I come back to the links and skim what I'm interested in. Sometimes this leads to 20 tabs being opened from a single site. And I don't have time to do it all in one sitting so I leave them there and come back to it. Thankfully tab suspend is a thing.

CrypticShift3• 4 years ago

What I personally do is, I use the "bookmark all tabs" to a folder feature, then I open them (together or one by one) from the new chrome side panel.

m0d0nne11• 4 years ago

YFG is probably aware that that pushing tabs off to the side for later consumption can be a big help in maintaining focus and spending screen time efficiently. And it's OK if you don't get to all of them - what a nice problem to have!

jasode• 4 years ago

Tabs are just links. Why do you have to keep them open? Can't you just bookmark them ?

I use both tabs and bookmarks and they serve different purposes:

- tabs are ephemeral and not meant to be saved. Saving them as bookmarks adds friction because it leads to "managing" them later in bookmarks UI to find+reload+delete them. Using multiple tabs avoids digital housekeeping work. Bookmarks are more useful if the url is "promoted" to reference status (e.g. like the weather page being bookmarked.) as a frequent shortcut.

- tabs already have the HTML downloaded and visually pre-rendered. Can quickly cycle through them like flipping through tv channels. Bookmarks are only text of page titles.

I often have about 50+ tabs open and I deliberately do not want to bookmark most of them.

On the other hand, if people are using tabs exactly as they would use bookmarks, maybe that's an anti-pattern because now the web browser is consuming gigabytes of RAM for a hundred tabs that should be bookmarked and closed to save resources.

CrypticShift3• 4 years ago

it leads to "managing" them later in bookmarks UI to find+reload+delete them

I agree. There is definitely less UX friction with tabs, and I can live with 20-30 (50 maaax) and only some of the time. But 100 ephemeral and much more? most of the time? IMO this is just unwillingness to improve the system. You can definitely get less friction dealing with most of them as organized bookmarks than wild tabs.

tabs already have the HTML downloaded and visually pre-rendered

Most new browsers purge tabs from memory, so the instantaneity is not there anymore.

deafpolygon2• 4 years ago

How do you have so many tabs on mobile? I get desktop - I hover around 100 most days.

dutchCourage• 4 years ago

About 40 on desktop, spread around 4 windows.

Less than 30 on mobile. Samsung's browsers lets me customize its interface. I added the "close tab" button there. It has kept my tab count in check.

thedanbob• 4 years ago

Currently 2 on mobile (including HN) and ~6 on my work desktop. 0 on my home desktop.

I only keep tabs open that I’m actively using or will use over the course of my day/week. Anything else gets bookmarked or archived.

glandium• 4 years ago

Mobile Firefox stopped giving an actual number a while ago. I think it's past 100 that it shows ∞, which is what it is displaying now for me. I'm not near my desktop right now, but there it's well over 4000. I'm a tab hoarder.

dusted• 4 years ago

I'm of the bookmark generation, my tapbount explodes during active trouble-shooting or research then dwindles to 0 immediately after. About 2k bookmarks. My bookmarks is a plain html file in my home directory, it is my "starting page" too, so I use it by opening a new window. I like it because it is easy to edit, human readable, and portable.

I'm sorry that there are so many people with hundreds of tabs open, because theyir use-pattern is why my browser constantly seems to want to purge tabs from active memory, even though I have plenty of free memory and do not want them purged. For instance, a few web-apps that have no active code or sockets, running, but does have a state.. when those tabs are purged, so is the state..

jostino• 4 years ago

My father beats me hands down. But I have to check it out his browser. I'm sure he has a lot more than me. I'll brb here with numbers asap.

blitzar• 4 years ago

8 on desktop, 3 on mobile.

The 100's/1000's people have real issues

Brajeshwar• 4 years ago

So, something is seriously wrong with me. I knew it.

I never have enough tabs opened at any time; if a tab is open, it is a to-do for me to either do it (read, or fill up or something), or ignore and close it. My mobile browser auto-closes if any tab is left open for more than a week (by mistake). Desktop browser has (except on rare days) all tabs closed and clean by end of day/work.

The most I have is like 15 or so odd ones that I read real quick (kinda speed-read). It is the time when I will also have a timer[0] running for 25-min, then close all even if I'm not finish. This is when I submit articles to Hackernews.

0. P.S. I found out about a year or so back that a timer is the best way to keep track and push your tasks on time. Now I own few mechanical kitchen timers, electronic ones, a large highly visual hourglass (30-min), and the only Complicatons on the primary Watch face is --- the Timer.

lapcat• 4 years ago

Currently two, including this one.

alex7o• 4 years ago

I have 85 on my phone, but until recently it was more than 200, I try to do some GC now

d4rkp4ttern• 4 years ago

Anyone know of good tab group managers? I tried it in Chrome but keep loosing the groups when I restart chrome

codingrightnow• 4 years ago

The old built in Firefox tab groups was amazing. I've left a version un-updated on one of my compters for years because of it. Unfortunately nothing has come close to replacing it. Tab groups on Opera is okay but extremely limited. Right now I'm using tree style tabs on another Firefox build and it's not bad. I wish I could name tab groups and that ctrl+tabbing through from the last tab wrapped around to the same group at the end rather than to the next tab group, but other than that it's not bad.

rkagerer• 4 years ago

Session Buddy on Chrome is tops.

theolivenbaum• 4 years ago

Just checked on chrome://inspect/#pages

- 176 on desktop

- 208 on laptop

- :D on mobile (guess that means 100+)

Usually they accumulate for a few weeks then I just close all windows except one where I save all I still need / want to read / etc...

(incidentally - why I want to build a browser extension to our app (curiosity.ai), to help navigate all this mess)

ksec• 4 years ago

40 Right Now, but last week it was 400+.

Safari is the only browser that doesn't give a list of Tabs. Both Chrome and Firefox have it.

Again, Multi ( I mean tens to hundreds or sometimes thousands ) Tab usage is still an unsolved problem.

leephillips• 4 years ago

You’re looking at the problem backwards: https://lee-phillips.org/permatab/

bronikowski• 4 years ago

4. I hate having open tabs. I close everything. If something is worth reading it goes into Pocket, if it's a repo worth inspecting, I clone it into a Syncthing folder, if it's something different, like a good hint on a thing I'm working on, it goes into vimwiki.

lhakedal• 4 years ago

2114 on desktop.

The laptop has 1000ish.

terminal_d3• 4 years ago

About 4500. Not kidding. Most of it is residue from "I'll read it later" or "I haven't properly understood it" sessions that inevitably crash. I run about ~50-100 (active) tabs at any given time, and the rest are "unloaded". And I don't want to get rid of them because they're a "sequence" of how I came to something (even though I document important stuff).

What'll end up happening though, is that one day I'll leave that user profile for some reason and make another, which will go up to 200 and then I'll convince myself that I'll go back to my old profile after I close all the current tabs. Doesn't really happen. This is what happened to the ~2k tab profile that preceded my current profile. I still have that profile (started in 2017), don't know if it'll run with the current FF version though.

This is also why I don't use Chrome, because it's a glorified dev testing environment unto itself and not really a proper, usable browser.

webmobdev• 4 years ago

Honestly, this system sounds dysfunctional and unproductive. I know HN rules discourage psychological analysis, so I'll stick with some useful generalities - Avoidance and procrastination generate anxiety. Anxiety has a way of distorting reality by magnifying the worst outcome (often even the improbable). And thus it creates a dysfunctional behaviour-emotion loop that feeds itself. To break out of it you have to face your anxiety and change your behaviour. Just begin by closing the oldest tabs. You'll find the world doesn't end (if you haven't read something in 5 years, do you really think it's important enough to read in 2022?). And start bookmarking (and tagging) web pages that you want to read later instead of keeping them open. If you want to see a list of bookmarks whenever you open your browser, use this extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bookmarks-sta... . Remember that you can export and backup bookmarks. That is way safer than keeping 100's or thousands of tabs open as a unexpected shutdown or crash could result in these tabs being lost and not recoverable.

terminal_d3• 4 years ago

Thanks for the unprompted psychoanalysis.

I don't have any anxiety / ADHD / any other "disorder". In fact I'm far more organized than most people. Information doesn't just "outdate" itself in a mere five years.

Also, for firefox you don't need to make bookmarks of everything -- it muddies the search suggestions. `places.sqlite` and the sessionstore are the only two files that need to be backed up, and can be accessed trivially. None of this is possible in Chrome (AFAIK).

_boffin_2• 4 years ago

I really like this feature that's in the Vivaldi browser that's called Reading List (Link: https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/panels/reading-list-panel/) and it solves my bookmark and tab collecting.

My following question is to gain insight and understanding rather than anything malicious and or any sort of judging.

Questions:

- When you've gone back to a tab that has been unloaded, how often has the site been changed when it reloads the data and or just not worked anymore? If you get that a lot, have you considered saving as a single file html or something?

- In your daily life, do you collect and find it difficult to throw away items that you think you'll need at some future point?

- How would you describe your organization style of non-digital items/goods?

- Since you have so many tabs open, how do you search for the things you care about in opened but unloaded tabs?

terminal_d3• 4 years ago

is to gain...

Ah, don't worry about it, his comment put me off a little and I didn't want subsequent comments to snowball.

My browser is messy because it is not my primary organizational structure. It's a dumping ground of sorts that I try to organize by date (tab # in window) and window. The info in most open sequences of tabs is usually saved somewhere, so I don't need to go back to that tab but it's very convenient for quick "reminders" of how I reached a certain position / conclusion / found some info.

When you've gone back to a tab that has been unloaded, how often has the site been changed when it reloads the data and or just not worked anymore? If you get that a lot, have you considered saving as a single file html or something?

From my OLD tabs (2017 and before) almost everything has changed. I do preserve the cache folders, so occasionally the old version of the website will load (when I enable networking but don't connect to a network). I don't see why it wouldn't work, URL deprecation isn't a very big deal for that time frame. I did use an addon to save some pages as HTML files. I don't remember its name, it was a XUL (pre-webextension) addon.

In your daily life, do you collect and find it difficult to throw away items that you think you'll need at some future point?
How would you describe your organization style of non-digital items/goods?

I'm not a hoarder :)

I throw out stuff I don't want / use

As far as information goes, I maintain backups although I usually never go back to them except for very broad file name / tree searches / greps. Storage is cheap and plentiful, what's a few gigs?

Since you have so many tabs open, how do you search for the things you care about in opened but unloaded tabs?

I use a tabs sidebar extension, and a tab search extension if one isn't natively provided by the sidebar extension. It's also possible to search open tabs from the FF omnibar. Also, the windows / tabs form an ad-hoc organizational structure that's very helpful. Anyway, like I said before, the browser is just my dumping ground. I could lose all but the last 500 tabs and still sleep like a baby.

kratom_sandwich• 4 years ago

~ 600 on Desktop

Strategies for managing tabs:

- Firefox is my main browser, so I use Pocket to save sites for reading later. Tab is then immediately closed.

- Add on to save open sessions, nuke session from time to time and start over

rpigab• 4 years ago

Desktop: 6 + 3 pinned, but I always start the day with only 1 + 3 pinned.

Mobile: 4 (I have a lot on mobile because I keep some to read later, even though they should be bookmarks at some point).

Additional notes:

emails currently in inbox: 0

Mental sanity: excellent

marssaxman• 4 years ago

Three, at the moment; it'll be two, after I finish posting this comment, since I've finished reading the discussion.

hiidrew• 4 years ago

- 28 on mobile

- desktop not sure, too many folders with various reads to count

Phrenzy• 4 years ago

Four.

Hacker news, this post, rpilocator, (it's Wednesday, Adafruit might get some in), and You Tube.

After I submit, I'll read some comments, close this tab, close the Hacker News tab, and watch a video.

karmakaze• 4 years ago

Personal: < 5 for both desktop and mobile.

Work: 3 Windows each with 50-100+ some in collapsed tab groups. Chrome now pauses and shows a spinning mouse pointer for 2-5 seconds when closing tabs. Restarting it helps a bit.

srsamarthyam• 4 years ago

500000+ OneTab

apocalyptic0n3• 4 years ago

6 on desktop and 3 on mobile. I rarely allow my browsers to get above 10 tabs open. Same goes for IDEs and iTerm. If I hit 10 tabs, I generally mass close everything. I don't ever feel productive with that many tabs open. If something is important, I'll bookmark it or throw it in Obsidian.

kondyt• 4 years ago

7859.

Firefox seems to have problems around 8000 (or maybe it's just me?), so don't go there :).

If you do, and Firefox crashes at startup, you might need to delete (or better: rename) some files under .mozilla/firefox/<profile>/:

.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/sessionstore-backups/recovery.jsonlz4

.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/sessionstore-backups/recovery.baklz4

.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/sessionstore.jsonlz4

You'll obviously lose the tabs opened since the last start.

You can have a backup with Tab Session Manager (for Chrome too):

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-session-m...

https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-Manager/releases

jaredsohn• 4 years ago

20. I use xTab (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xtab/amddgdnlkmoha...) which automatically closes the oldest unpinned tab so the count never goes above a user-specified size.

This lets me jump back to recent tabs and I don't miss those that close on their own.

Note: if you use this and use a web-based meeting site like Google Meet, make sure you pin that so you don't get disconnected if you start browsing the web during a meeting.

CM30• 4 years ago

I try to keep my tabs to a fairly low count by closing ones I'm not using, though I don't always succeed. At the moment, I've got about 10 tabs open, but that'll likely go down to between 5-8 soon.

poly_morphis• 4 years ago

I'm sort of OCD about open tabs. I close them whenever I'm finished (or think I'm finished). Worst case scenario, I open the browser history and navigate back to what I wanted. This doesn't happen very often. If something needs saving, it goes into my bookmarks.

Slightly unrelated, but I'm the same way on my desktop too. I hate open windows that I'm not actively using. I always force close things on my MacBook.

Edit: To answer the question, 1.

KomoD• 4 years ago

105 loaded on Desktop at the moment but I usually hover around ~300-350, at peak I had 1915 loaded at one time.

falloutx• 4 years ago

- 365 on desktop (I am using a vertical tab list since I can't even see anything at the top)

- 25 on mobile

heresjohnny• 4 years ago

At most: 10. And I actively close them. Whenever I need something back I can just look at history.

Ask HN: Your browser tab count

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