I'm probably in the minority but I can't stand having more than 10 tabs and I start have the urge to finish the task that I'm focused on to just close as many tabs as possible.
So I really read the people talking about 100s of tabs and when I see a colleague having them, I feel that my cognitive ability to deal with that is not there.
I understand that people would like to keep things and that bookmarks sucks, but I would suggest for those to explore Hister [1] and Karakeep [2]. It is much useful that I don't worry about losing stuff now.
I am a tab hoarder. It's usually because a task requires me to open a dozen tab, and I may have multiple tasks, including ones I intend to come back to later, if I ever have the time.
And no, I do not really have more cognitive ability. Or at least certainly not to the point where I can remember each tab.
I wish I had another way to visualize them. A mind map would be ideal, this is also why I like tab groups and tree-style tabs.
Let's pick an example: I am looking for a product (could be a car, screen, mouse, etc). I explore the product space, perform a wide search first to identify candidates. ~10 tabs. Then I make a short list. 5-15 tabs. For each, I will look at datasheets, reviews, manuals, search for common issues, availability of spare parts, etc. Dozens of tabs per product, but I will close most of these, and leave the most salient ones open. Prune the whole product from the tree if I can eliminate it. And so on (availability at retailers, second hand stores, etc), until the task is done.
Obviously the depth will vary from one task to another, but this is how I usually work on any topic, including literature review. So I only have "root nodes" with the next 20-ish tabs related to it. I don't mind archiving and restoring a tree later, but "out of sight, out of mind", and having them visible reminds me of the tasks in flight.
There are probably more effective ways to work, including spreadsheets (I use them when there is a lot of data to track), but browsers aren't bad at handling that many tabs, usually. Though I also tend to leave a huge quantity of tabs open on my phone: half-read articles that I intend to come back to. Wallabag may help there?
I would conclude by saying it's probably (bad?) habits, a locally optimum workflow, I should expend some energy to try a better approach.
Anyway, your two links are now sitting in my open tabs, hopefully I will come back to them at some point :)
Maybe tab groups would be enough? One group per product. Close the whole group with one click, and you can reorder them based on preference. It’s what I use for different tasks since they all have their own repo, pipelines, docs, etc
I also can't have more than 10 tabs. More than that and I automatically go into clean up mode.
> I feel that my cognitive ability to deal with that is not there.
I dunno, I've always thought of 100+ tab people similarly to people who don't like to clean up their bedroom. Just a different preference for tidiness/organization, rather than a greater cognitive ability.
Preference indeed. Us people whose desks look like 3 minutes after a bomb fell usually know exactly what is on that desk and can reach for it without looking.
but I abuse tabs (and especially tab groups) as a form a "read later"
sure there are extensions which do that better, but they aren't build-in and given how dangerous extensions can be (depending on a lot of criteria) and tab groups being close to "all I want" it's just not worth it
loved the idea when FF adopted pocked, but Pocked never really clicked with me and it was never fully transparently integrated into the browser.
and yes this approach is prone to losing tabs in various situations, but lets be honest if I haven't read something by the time I lose a tab in the end it's just an indicator that it's probably doesn't matter
On my work computer I usually close all of my tabs at the end of the day, and/or when I change tasks. Sometimes, if I'm working on a multi-day challenging task, I might keep a few tabs open.
Otherwise, if I "might" go back to something, I bookmark it.
This is a form of bookmarking in practice. I know people doing this and none could list what the tabs are without checking each one. In the physical world you have the equivalent of people having the desk full of stuff they never use but don't put away because they might use it later.
They are actually similar in the goal but I use them both for different reasons. Hister does save all of my history for desktop (not available on iOS yet) so I use it as backup to get something I wanted to see but lost. But Karakeep is everywhere and I save things there that I want to keep (it can save the actual page) and can use it on mobile ....etc (and share it too).
This is at least my workflow which can be different. Both are great tools and selfhosted.
Been years since I used tags in bookmarks, but on FF mobile I do often miss qutebrowser's quickmarks. I have a lot of stuff like "malw" to get to my MAL Watching list on my PC. My compromise on mobile is to use the bookmark titles kinda like a search or a description with keyboard stuffing, so maybe the default name of the bookmark is something generic like "MyAnimeList.net", I'll put "malw - " at the start of it, then next time I hit new tab and type malw out of habit it should come up. Not as good or reliable as a quickmark, but you could probably do something similar for a tag replacement. Bookmark some blog post about the Amiga, edit the title, throw in "retrocomputing diy technology blogpost hacking" or similar on either end, then when you type in "retrocomputing" later it should show up along your other stuff with that in the title. Might be more primitive but should do the trick.
At work I’m basically required to use Chrome and Chrome does not keep browser history beyond 90 days. That is useless. An open tab can easily last more than 90 days and survive restarts.
Nah, my point is that having tons of tabs open literally clouds my mind, like being in a messy room. Closing the tabs feels like I'm tidying up. History exists so that I can still go back to a tab if I really need it, which makes it less "scary" to simply start from a clean slate.
I don't generally do anything "incriminating" that would need to stay out of my browser history, and even if I did, clearing your local browser history isn't going to mean much: If it's truly criminal stuff you're talking about, all the websites you use are likely subpoena-able anyway and they'll get your "history" one way or another.
For mildly "incriminating" stuff that isn't illegal, just use an Incognito window. :-)
Why? I don't really have anything that dangerous, illegal, or weird open... And the browser history on my local machine is at most exposed to me and my fiancé, who I don't really care to hide it away from.
You do you, I'll do me. I know I'm not the only one, otherwise, the option wouldn't even be available as a preference. Just because you can't think of a reason someone might want to use that option does not mean everyone else is the same level of unimaginative.
As for specifics of why, that's something I've chosen to do and that's all that matters.
> As for specifics of why, that's something I've chosen to do and that's all that matters.
No obligation to share, certainly.
Curiosity is there in part because we may learn a valuable lesson - something those “with nothing to hide” [I know] might not’ve considered. (not a request, we can learn from others)
If authorities already have the means to access your browser history then deleting it won't accomplish anything. They can just install malware and see what you're browsing anyway.
In a remote hack or an evil maid attack, sure. If you get targeted for something, and your computer is confiscated and searched, the less ammunition stored there the better. With a large enough dataset (emails, web history, etc.) it’s pretty easy to cherry pick data points to build a narrative.
I don’t bother with this level of defensiveness but I can follow the reasoning.
I would've thought it paranoia that such things would happen in the west, but given the insanity in the UK in recent years (1) maybe it's not. Seems pretty common to get arrested in the UK for posting memes.
We've all see the stories about people being forced to grant access at border crossings. This is a specific type of information they would love to see. Being in the habit of not storing it means you don't have to forget to do it at the random time you need to have it deleted. So when you do a full shut down before going through the airport, which you obviously do, your browser has already cleaned up for you.
I don't care if I think I've done nothing wrong. The jackbooted thugs at the border might have a different say so, and now you're screwed because you felt like your history was necessary. I trust no one, and I'm not even a freedom fighter.
I had the same habit, so I built an extension for it: tabs you haven't touched in a while get auto-archived after a certain period of time, and you can search the archive later.
There's a free tier, and a paid plan for heavier use. You can try it out here:
https://tabsprompt.com
I don't think any browsers are really designed for the range of how many tabs people keep open.
I also wonder what the distribution does really look like. Just on my primary profile here I felt like I was making progress trying to get it to under 2000 tabs recently.
It feels like a hopeless battle though. Across multiple machines and browsers and browser profiles i'd reckon i'm stuck at like 12,000 open tabs.
Might be just me but I just close everything at the end of day to start a clean slate for next day (usually around 50). I also just use bookmarks for persistent autocomplete.
I used to be so good at this, then came Claude. My newest invention is a root Claude that has clear instructions on how to handle me, and it writes handoff notes. Doesn’t help though so mayday.
Honest question how many of that 2k are just the same webpages but just different days?
I personally am a close the whole browser out at the end of the day guy. With bookmarks for things I just have not got to yet. With a every few months cleanup of the 'to do' folder. Just today I have probably opened 20 tabs and closed 15 so far. At the end of the day they should all be gone.
I do the same. Bookmarks are a case of “out of sight, out of mind”, whereas I come across open tabs eventually. They are like physical cues to remind me of things, akin to leaving the trash bag in front of the door so you can’t forget to take it when you leave.
What is the point of having that many tabs open? You just need to close your browser and start over from one. Websites don't go away just because you close the tab, you can come back later.
Do you actually come back to a tab 2,000 tabs later?
Lately I've tried using an extension to close any tabs I haven't opened for a few days. I haven't missed them, and if I actually want to come back to something, I make a todo now.
The main issue is overcoming i opened a tab for reason and i want to close a tab for a reason, but tabs usually lead to more tabs so even trying to stay on top of it, it just endlessly grows.
Youtube alone is a major culprit and i'm confused on how everyone doesn't have at least several hundred videos they started watching or opened in a tab out of possible future interest.
For youtube, sticking it on 'watch later' is one approach, or some other playlist. Even better, that way you can cronjob a script to save them locally. I'll leave youtube tabs for too long (despite this) and too often I've eventually returned and it's been removed. My other tab-shrinking habits are bookmark folders in the form "year-unread" and a local txt file where I loosely dump related URLs into pseudo-categories/sections.
This feels like a hoarders mentality. You don't have to answer this but do you hoard in any other aspects of life? There's nothing more therapeutic than closing tabs. Worst case, everything is in history and can be opened again.
No I don't think I do. I associate "hoarders" with reality tv and disastrously messy homes though which I can't relate to.
If anything though I would say I associate open tabs in the same vein as an infinitely growing number of books in the to read list or movies in the to watch list. Both usually leading to a tree branch style recommendation of more and more books or movies I might be interested in after consuming.
"Originally, I was thinking about blocking users from closing their overgrown tabs until they slash all plants, but I thought it would be too annoying... "
I would ask that you please add this as an option :), might actually use it for that feature alone because I do accidentally close old tabs by accident without noticing that was meaning to keep open.
Nice, I have sth similar on my wiki, namely random binary string overlaying the page with the text "If you can read this text (opacity=0.41) if means the page has not been edited for a long time. Consequently the information it holds might be deprecated or no longer represent the opinion of this author." to clarify.
People get inspired by seeing a new color, smelling a new scent, or hearing a new song. Inspiration comes in all shapes and forms. Makes me kind of sad that you seemingly haven't been inspired by something random in life yet.
Personally, I don't like too many tabs opened at the same time, prefer bookmarks for "later". Trying to imagine what would I do with this plants invaded tabs - just close it 100%
Anyway, the idea is entertaining and the execution is beaitiful
I did a small mockup (built by a LLM agent) of a related concept. A page that gets more wear where people interact with it https://app.squidler.io/peggy/patina/
In a similar vein, Apple in the ¿’90s? toyed with the idea of making desktop icons show their age, and of making directories with lots of content bulkier and harder to drag around.
This is so cool! I wish for this to be available on Firefox, where I usually have multiple windows with each window having several tabs. The repository doesn’t make it clear if this works on non-Chrome/ium browsers.
Classic joke at university was to sprinkle cress seeds on the carpet of someone's room and water it with a fine mist from a plant sprayer. In the morning the inhabitant would wake up to a neat lawn that had appeared overnight by magic.
OK, now I'm having flashbacks of astronomy Macintosh lab, late at night, too much homework (early 90's).
Fell asleep in front of keyboard, woke up to "Can of Worms" screensaver (never seen it before), had a heck of a start, wondering what the sound was, and what all those things were crawling all over the screen???
Tab hoarding is why I've gone back from vertical tabs to horizontal and stopped using tab groups.
Horizontal tabs bunching up and becoming cluttered is a feature I really enjoy. I love the feeling of reaching the end of a project/milestone and closing a whole load of tabs. Vertical tabs just start scrolling and once you start adding groups you quickly lose track.
I think people who like vertical tabs and trees etc. use tabs as a sort of long-term knowledge base. But I think tabs work better as an ephemeral/current state. There are much better tools for building knowledge bases then browser tabs.
Surprising there's only one comment mentioning tab unloading. I'm the kind of person who has hundreds of tabs opened (422 right now), and this tool is useless for me because at any time only ~20 of them are loaded. And I'm not going to visit a tab to see how overgrown it is, something like this would work better if it worked on tab items in the tab bar instead of the contents of the tabs themselves.
Exactly my thoughts, I love this idea, but would like the vines to grow over the tab items instead of the window itself. the trouble there however is that sometimes my tab icons are literally just icons (or even less) with my tab hoarding tendencies
These useless programs are like what you used to see back in win98 or winxp with dancing monkey or scoopydoo walking all over your desktop windows, which I think later turned to human dancers before being used to distribute all sort of viruses.
"BonziBuddy was described as spyware[1] and adware,[2] and was discontinued in 2004 after Bonzi Software, Inc. faced lawsuits and fines regarding the software.[3]"
It's just a matter of time before something like a "Zoltar screensaver for Basecamp" becomes an IP siphon.
I currently have like 300 tabs open across 4 machines (two computers, a tablet and a phone). Some have been open for 2 or 3 years :)
Closing tabs open for too long would definitely a good idea. Then there are tabs that are open for years and years (like my nextcloud tab) and it's as it should be...
Woah, my interests! Anyone have any tips or favorite projects to share from procedural vine/flora generation? It's a fascinating space, and this extension seems to do surprisingly convincing job of it
I have serious ADHD and I often dive a rabbit hole for an idea for side project. Or research. Or combination of both. Most of my side projects you could categorize as spikes. There's no serious intent on delivering something of value for the world, just going from A to B and learning a thing or two on the run.
I'm like kerosene, I light up instantly, but the fire goes away very quickly. I can be researching a thing for 3 nights straight in my spare time to gather hooks and pieces of information... and then I get distracted and my focus goes somewhere else. And I'm left with 10 tabs that were suppose to kick start my idea.
To my own surprise I tend to go back to these ideas, but sometimes it takes me months, and sometimes, I keep these tabs on one of my devices, opened for months at a time. Sometimes I scrape them, adding links with notes to Obsidian.
Of course the amount of hoarded information vastly exceeds my throughput.
So I really read the people talking about 100s of tabs and when I see a colleague having them, I feel that my cognitive ability to deal with that is not there.
I understand that people would like to keep things and that bookmarks sucks, but I would suggest for those to explore Hister [1] and Karakeep [2]. It is much useful that I don't worry about losing stuff now.
[1] https://github.com/asciimoo/hister/ [2] https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep
I am a tab hoarder. It's usually because a task requires me to open a dozen tab, and I may have multiple tasks, including ones I intend to come back to later, if I ever have the time.
And no, I do not really have more cognitive ability. Or at least certainly not to the point where I can remember each tab.
I wish I had another way to visualize them. A mind map would be ideal, this is also why I like tab groups and tree-style tabs.
Let's pick an example: I am looking for a product (could be a car, screen, mouse, etc). I explore the product space, perform a wide search first to identify candidates. ~10 tabs. Then I make a short list. 5-15 tabs. For each, I will look at datasheets, reviews, manuals, search for common issues, availability of spare parts, etc. Dozens of tabs per product, but I will close most of these, and leave the most salient ones open. Prune the whole product from the tree if I can eliminate it. And so on (availability at retailers, second hand stores, etc), until the task is done.
Obviously the depth will vary from one task to another, but this is how I usually work on any topic, including literature review. So I only have "root nodes" with the next 20-ish tabs related to it. I don't mind archiving and restoring a tree later, but "out of sight, out of mind", and having them visible reminds me of the tasks in flight.
There are probably more effective ways to work, including spreadsheets (I use them when there is a lot of data to track), but browsers aren't bad at handling that many tabs, usually. Though I also tend to leave a huge quantity of tabs open on my phone: half-read articles that I intend to come back to. Wallabag may help there?
I would conclude by saying it's probably (bad?) habits, a locally optimum workflow, I should expend some energy to try a better approach.
Anyway, your two links are now sitting in my open tabs, hopefully I will come back to them at some point :)
> I feel that my cognitive ability to deal with that is not there.
I dunno, I've always thought of 100+ tab people similarly to people who don't like to clean up their bedroom. Just a different preference for tidiness/organization, rather than a greater cognitive ability.
Preference indeed. Us people whose desks look like 3 minutes after a bomb fell usually know exactly what is on that desk and can reach for it without looking.
but I abuse tabs (and especially tab groups) as a form a "read later"
sure there are extensions which do that better, but they aren't build-in and given how dangerous extensions can be (depending on a lot of criteria) and tab groups being close to "all I want" it's just not worth it
loved the idea when FF adopted pocked, but Pocked never really clicked with me and it was never fully transparently integrated into the browser.
and yes this approach is prone to losing tabs in various situations, but lets be honest if I haven't read something by the time I lose a tab in the end it's just an indicator that it's probably doesn't matter
Otherwise, if I "might" go back to something, I bookmark it.
This is a form of bookmarking in practice. I know people doing this and none could list what the tabs are without checking each one. In the physical world you have the equivalent of people having the desk full of stuff they never use but don't put away because they might use it later.
This is at least my workflow which can be different. Both are great tools and selfhosted.
To put it another way, it helps me recognize which tabs I am using. And which I am saving for later without having to evaluate the content of the tab.
One tweak… the coverage percentage can it be adjustable? Max = 100% looses all information about the pages contents, except the title.
Also also… if the images can be made translucent… you can make old timey effects like yellowing and decay.
You can't use the old tab because all the plants. You open a new tab for the same page. Don't need to close any old tab for that.
versus what the operating system or browser can provide.
In fact, weren't bookmarks supposed to solve EXACTLY this? You'd just bookmark a website on any page then come back to it any time in the future.
But then websites wanted to be apps and stopped storing state in the URL...
But tabs store history, and that's important pretty often to me. And I can dig through multiple tabs and their histories together.
Have session storage extensions ever caught up to where they were before firefox dumped XUL?
Oh yeah, you're right. I do sometimes need the Back button to retain its history, and sometimes duplicate tabs to start a new "breadcrumb" path.
Okay, okay, but what if! https://files.catbox.moe/4m6c5x.png
People forget about browser history. It’s super useful.
My technique: I open tabs just like anyone else, and when I feel like “that’s too many tabs”, I just close them all. Every one of them.
If I need them again? Open up the browser history. It’s searchable. It has everything. Use it!
https://tab-session-manager.sienori.com/
not very well, except you add a lot keywords to website title manually via bookmaeks
For mildly "incriminating" stuff that isn't illegal, just use an Incognito window. :-)
As for specifics of why, that's something I've chosen to do and that's all that matters.
No obligation to share, certainly.
Curiosity is there in part because we may learn a valuable lesson - something those “with nothing to hide” [I know] might not’ve considered. (not a request, we can learn from others)
I don’t bother with this level of defensiveness but I can follow the reasoning.
1: https://www.fire.org/news/blogs/free-speech-dispatch/uk-teen...
Not really sure how any of that has anything to do with leaving a browser history
“[Any/most documentation of activity and behavior] is nothing but self incriminating evidence.”
I don't care if I think I've done nothing wrong. The jackbooted thugs at the border might have a different say so, and now you're screwed because you felt like your history was necessary. I trust no one, and I'm not even a freedom fighter.
Maybe there’s a better way
There's a free tier, and a paid plan for heavier use. You can try it out here: https://tabsprompt.com
https://github.com/echelon/browser-focus
I need to add screenshots.
Basically puts an overlay on all timed out tabs, shows all timed out tabs so you can kill them all together, etc.
I want a better algorithm / heuristic that can semantically track what I'm doing.
I might eventually be brave enough to break out of tabs and let my windowing system handle everything.
I also wonder what the distribution does really look like. Just on my primary profile here I felt like I was making progress trying to get it to under 2000 tabs recently.
It feels like a hopeless battle though. Across multiple machines and browsers and browser profiles i'd reckon i'm stuck at like 12,000 open tabs.
Would you mind giving this a shot and sharing your feedback? https://github.com/TheCodeArtist/firefox-tabs-review
Helps wade through the backlog of tabs to "burndown" one by one or en-masse?
Isn't it dead at the slogan already?
I personally am a close the whole browser out at the end of the day guy. With bookmarks for things I just have not got to yet. With a every few months cleanup of the 'to do' folder. Just today I have probably opened 20 tabs and closed 15 so far. At the end of the day they should all be gone.
Lately I've tried using an extension to close any tabs I haven't opened for a few days. I haven't missed them, and if I actually want to come back to something, I make a todo now.
The main issue is overcoming i opened a tab for reason and i want to close a tab for a reason, but tabs usually lead to more tabs so even trying to stay on top of it, it just endlessly grows.
Youtube alone is a major culprit and i'm confused on how everyone doesn't have at least several hundred videos they started watching or opened in a tab out of possible future interest.
If anything though I would say I associate open tabs in the same vein as an infinitely growing number of books in the to read list or movies in the to watch list. Both usually leading to a tree branch style recommendation of more and more books or movies I might be interested in after consuming.
https://trello.com/power-ups/55a5d917446f517774210012
I was doing a little creative exercise the other day around the word "Overgrowth”…
Is this a common thing in the creative space? Seems like a fun activity
Personally, I don't like too many tabs opened at the same time, prefer bookmarks for "later". Trying to imagine what would I do with this plants invaded tabs - just close it 100%
Anyway, the idea is entertaining and the execution is beaitiful
I don’t think that ever led to a real product.
Fell asleep in front of keyboard, woke up to "Can of Worms" screensaver (never seen it before), had a heck of a start, wondering what the sound was, and what all those things were crawling all over the screen???
Horizontal tabs bunching up and becoming cluttered is a feature I really enjoy. I love the feeling of reaching the end of a project/milestone and closing a whole load of tabs. Vertical tabs just start scrolling and once you start adding groups you quickly lose track.
I think people who like vertical tabs and trees etc. use tabs as a sort of long-term knowledge base. But I think tabs work better as an ephemeral/current state. There are much better tools for building knowledge bases then browser tabs.
"BonziBuddy was described as spyware[1] and adware,[2] and was discontinued in 2004 after Bonzi Software, Inc. faced lawsuits and fines regarding the software.[3]"
It's just a matter of time before something like a "Zoltar screensaver for Basecamp" becomes an IP siphon.
Closing tabs open for too long would definitely a good idea. Then there are tabs that are open for years and years (like my nextcloud tab) and it's as it should be...
I have a ton of these tabs. I don't consider them "neglected" though.
Some things take years to come to fruition. You can't just go buy them at home despot.
Maybe younger people don't yet have an appreciation for things that assume an air of legacy and heritage after many years of "just sitting there".
When finally re-visited, they have a meaning that can only accumulate with the passage of significant time...
At some point it’ll get flushed and you’ll only have yourself to blame…
I have serious ADHD and I often dive a rabbit hole for an idea for side project. Or research. Or combination of both. Most of my side projects you could categorize as spikes. There's no serious intent on delivering something of value for the world, just going from A to B and learning a thing or two on the run.
I'm like kerosene, I light up instantly, but the fire goes away very quickly. I can be researching a thing for 3 nights straight in my spare time to gather hooks and pieces of information... and then I get distracted and my focus goes somewhere else. And I'm left with 10 tabs that were suppose to kick start my idea.
To my own surprise I tend to go back to these ideas, but sometimes it takes me months, and sometimes, I keep these tabs on one of my devices, opened for months at a time. Sometimes I scrape them, adding links with notes to Obsidian.
Of course the amount of hoarded information vastly exceeds my throughput.