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?
because I’m working on multiple tasks at once, and some of those tasks require comparing things like data sheets or products or reading multiple documents
because I don’t want to dig up the thing I was looking at yesterday with a 10-tab group, but I also ran out of time yesterday to complete the task
because I can and it’s convenient
because I keep something open until I have dealt with it, so it functions as a task list
Those are pretty solid arguments. Also, you’re not alone. There are lots of people who have a stack of tabs open for the exact same reasons. I han’d considered those reasons before, so thanks for making me aware of them.