I just saw a coworker with something like 30 tabs open in Chrome. I also know someone who regularly hits the 500-tab limit on their phone, though I suspect that’s more about being messy than anything else.
When I’m researching something, I might have 10-50 tabs open for a while, but once I’m done, I close them all. If I need them again, browser history is there.
Why do people keep so many tabs open? Is there a workflow or habit I’m missing? Do they just never clean up, or is there a real benefit to tab hoarding? I’m genuinely curious. Why do people do that?
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.
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. Some browsers have vertical tab bars built in, but it’s considerably less useful if you can’t collapse part of the list.
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.
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.