45% of people have 20 browser tabs open at a time

https://opensource.com/article/19/6/how-many-browser-tabs

by cborenstein • 3 years ago

26 30 3 years ago

wvenable• 3 years ago

20? I'm up an average of 200.

For those wondering how that is manageable I use Firefox with multirow tabs. And how it gets so high is that I always open links in new tabs in the background when doing any research.

cborenstein3• 3 years ago

The research did say 20+ (HN took out the +) so you may not be alone. That sounds hefty though! Do you feel like it works well for you?

1MachineElf2• 3 years ago

At my job where we can only use MS Edge, the Vertical Tabs feature helps me immensely with ~1000 tab sessions. I'm not sure about Google Chrome, but Brave also adopted the feature this past year.

My browser windows are like literal trains of thought where each tab is a station. I only close them when the journey is finished, so to speak. If possible, I like to preserve the tab structure if I ever must save them for another time. The problems with doing so are 1) no browsers support this natively, and 2) the add-ons/extensions/plugins which do this are either clunky or closed-source software.

cborenstein3• 3 years ago

Ooh interesting - I'm not too familiar with vertical tabs. Will check it out!

What advantages do you see to keeping a large number of tabs open at a time? Do you find that you return to them?

Tagbert• 3 years ago

I’m similar, I have around 200 tabs open at any given time on my work machine. I use Firefox and a plugin called Panorama to manage them.

On an ongoing basis, I am typically working on 4-5 projects plus some utility functions. I use Panorama to group the tabs by project. Each project has 10-20 tabs open. Panorama only shows the tabs from a particular group at a given time. By grouping the tabs, the cognitive load is reduced.

Over the course of a day, I will visit most of these project groups and interact with the tabs in each. Some of long running tabs like the main project page. Others are tabs for current open issue. It is helpful to me to be able to treat each project as a browser workspace and be able to return to that workspace at will. Using bookmarks and closing tabs would add more overhead. Often I am switching quickly between projects and I may have open editing sessions on one or more tabs that are not ready to close.

The browser+OS (MacOS ) handles the RAM usage gracefully and swaps tabs to SSD when they are not recently used and more memory is needed. I’ve never seen an “out of memory” message even though I’m running Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other apps like Affinity Photo at the same time.

robnotbob• 3 years ago

I've been using a newish browser called Arc (OSX only at the moment) for a little bit and it's perfect for this sort of workflow.

They've basically have two types of tabs. Pinned tabs which persist and nonpinned tabs which do not.

https://resources.arc.net/en/articles/6449654-pinned-tabs-ta...

aldanor• 3 years ago

200? I'm an average of 1-2k with TST on Firefox...

asksomeoneelse• 3 years ago

2K ? I learned the hard way that Firefox has a limit of 8000 tabs per window when reloading a previous session. Wrote a small app to split the tabs to save my decade-old session. The day I close a tab without having read it hasn't come yet !

shapefrog• 3 years ago

200? You gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers in this racket.

LazyMans• 3 years ago

I close everything each morning. There is some sort of relief this provides me. Like clearing of noise in my visual field. It makes it easier to get started with work and stay working.

edit: For my personal machine, this rule doesn't apply. I just close stuff I don't "need" open anymore.

Guid_NewGuid• 3 years ago

This is still like chaotic neutral at best.

I refuse to believe computers can stay on overnight (spot the Windows user). I shut my computer down completely every afternoon so it can have a rest and start up refreshed tomorrow.*

*What actually happens is some bug in MySQL on Docker irreversibly corrupts my database every week or so. (Again, spot the Windows user).

cborenstein3• 3 years ago

I also try to close things out each evening - and any tabs that I "need" I at least jot down in a notepad for later.

My main motivation is keeping the performance on my computer strong but there is something really nice about getting to start fresh each day.

Peanuts99• 3 years ago

It brings me peace to close tabs. I try to aim for having 4 or 5 open. Then I look at my girlfriend's screen and the favicon doesn't even fit it in the tab anymore and it kills me.

JohnFen• 3 years ago

I really don't understand how people can stand using their browser in that way. The only time I ever have more than two tabs going is if I'm actively researching something -- and even then, I'll have multiple instances of the browser, each with 4-5 tabs, and at the end of my research session, they all get closed down.

But I don't think that people who have an insane number of tabs going are doing it wrong or anything. I'm just amazed that people find doing that to be useful.

TillE• 3 years ago

For me at least, it's basically a substitute for a good bookmarking system. I want to get back to that tab eventually, but if I just bookmark it, it'll get lost in the churn and forgotten forever. I hope some day there will be a holy grail of bookmarking software which somehow solves this, but I don't even know what that would look like.

If I'm working on a specific project and find a great resource, I'll definitely paste the link in an Obsidian note and close the tab. But there's plenty of stuff which doesn't quite fit that workflow.

realitythreek• 3 years ago

I expand this idea a tad. 4-8 tabs per window. But then I organize tabs based on context. Then I can switch around contexts and still have my handful of tabs open.

Sometimes that means 1 window, sometimes that means 4 windows. Just depends on what I’m doing.

noaoh• 3 years ago

I'm trying simple tab groups on Firefox so they're more organized. Used to let them fill the screen until I got sick of it and deleted them.

piceas• 3 years ago

My tabs are a convenientish curated list. It is wasteful and I hate it. At worst (best?) I've taken to sending a tab to another device as a way of dismissing it for later.

I hope someone jumps on the language model hype and makes an extension that summarizes what I have read, seen, and done on the web. Perhaps with a choice screenshot or two.

I don't need a tree of pages, a spreadsheet, or a pie chart of time wasted on hn. I spent my time here on purpose, show me or tell me why. Remind me of the topics so I can close the tab and come back to it easily when needed.

ratg13• 3 years ago

OneTab and Pocket seem like they might be a good fit for you.

melagonster2• 3 years ago

I am using OneTab, it is good for let my yesterday workspace go back.

Already__Taken• 3 years ago

I would very much like my browsing history graph not the list. I feel like I should never have to make bookmarks.

Smithalicious• 3 years ago

I generally have 200-500 tabs open at a time, appropriately sorted into groups and hierarchies using sidebery

jlokier• 3 years ago

Hmm. I appear to have 15726 tabs open at the moment, in 35 windows.

These research sessions get a little out of hand sometimes.

interstice• 3 years ago

This post made me realise that at some point In the last few years I stopped consciously managing tabs. Three windows on boot, two work one personal - usually about 3-15 tabs each. Feel overwhelmed? Close all except the current tab.

asadotzler• 3 years ago

Our telemetry says 98% of Firefox users have fewer than 20 tabs open. And that's Beta data so heavily skewed to more sophisticated users. I wouldn't be surprised if it was closer to 99% maxing out at under 20. 95% have fewer than 10 tabs open. 75% have 3 or fewer.

MrYellowP• 3 years ago

20? That's rookie numbers.

45% of people have 20 browser tabs open at a time

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