Ask HN: How many tabs do you have open in the browser(s) and why?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47884063

by juujian • 3 months ago

11 17 3 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

sssilver• 3 months ago

A whole bunch of them. Because they all seem “useful” and I’m not “done” with them yet.

On my work computer, at least four - one each for the web apps, like Notion or Monday.com in which I'm working. Sometimes, I have a couple of tabs open for each app.

On my own computer, two maybe three - one for email, one for Nextcloud, and whatever one I'm using for browsing.

aroido-bigcat• 3 months ago

For me it’s usually not about the number, it’s about unfinished decisions.

Most tabs are just “I’ll come back to this”, and they pile up because I never actually decide to either use it or drop it.

MrCharismatist• 3 months ago

Right this second, four.

Mail, Hermes Agent Dashboard, ESPN draft tracker, HN

I harvest tabs mercilessly, I either read and close or if its something I want to keep I have the bot clip into my obsidian vault

khedoros1• 3 months ago

A lot. Often a couple dozen for pages that are currently queued up to read, with pages further to the left being older and often forgotten (or they're pages that I would like to have read, but don't want to take the time to read, and I haven't accepted that distinction yet). Another window might have reference material for whatever I'm working on. If I've only got one page open there, it usually means that I'm not deep into the process.

WalterGR2• 3 months ago

More than 6,000 just on my phone. No tabs groups. I only use that browser for recreation. It’s an undifferentiated stream of “things that look interesting” and I may or may not ever look at the tabs again, which is fine.

Far fewer on browsers I use for productive pursuits, but hundreds across multiple windows and many tab groups. I have a lot of projects, and haven’t found a great way ‘shelve’ and ‘unshelve’ them.

apothegm2• 3 months ago

I’m the same way. Phone is around 250 right now because I cleared out all open tabs about a year ago — was never going to look at them again.

About 20-50 open on the personal laptop at a given moment, bursting higher when researching or troubleshooting something. Work computer has more like 75 as baseline, bursting to a couple hundred. Every now and then I very briefly get that back below 20.

standardly• 3 months ago

GEEZ have you guys tried bookmarks?!

itdar• 3 months ago

About 20- 40 open for office laptop. It's for my memory and context switching.

rtmx• 3 months ago

I think a good way to treat tabs and open files in other apps is like the 'zero inbox' when 'open' means 'do something about it', it's your task list.

Hence, I could never understand how people have more than like 20 tabs open — what are you working on in this case? For myself, I only go to 20-ish territories when aggressively looking for docs or opening something for quick batch-like extraction, it's a very short-timed situation.

Usually it's just three pinned mailboxes and something I'm currently on, like 2-5 tabs, one of them is likely a search engine.

Panzerschrek• 3 months ago

I have mostly 3-4 tabs open. It's more if I am searching something, but I soon as I have found it, I close unnecessary tabs. I don't understand people keeping many tabs open - why?

DantesKite• 3 months ago

About four right now.

I used to have far more, but I learned the habit of bookmarking tabs that I've kept open for a long period of time.

Actually, now that I think about it, this would make for a useful browser extension: have an LLM that automatically asks to bookmark tabs that have been inactive but present for X number of days.

mikewarot• 3 months ago

Usually 1, unless I'm composing a post and need references open.

My child usually has 50 or more, it freaks me out every time.

nonamesleft• 3 months ago

1209 across 8 windows, been like this since the year 2000 or thereabouts (netscape with a tabbed window manager back then, then opera), most of them are hibernated. Why? Bookmarks just dont seem to work for me, i do have some thousands of those for stuff that is not related to anything thats going on right now.

madprops• 3 months ago

I'm currently optimizing my firefox tab manager (Grasshopper) to handle a user that has over 20k tabs.

Ask HN: How many tabs do you have open in the browser(s) and why?

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