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?

  • MurrayL@lemmy.worldEnglish
    62·
    2 hours ago

    The weirdest thing to me is how some people brag about how many tabs they have open as if it’s a competition. Like, it shouldn’t be a point of pride, it just shows you don’t know how to use bookmarks.

    I think it’s closely related to people with tens of thousands of emails in their inbox, and people who keep all their files on their desktop. Some people just live in chaos.

    • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 hour ago

      Why spend all that time making and deleting bookmarks when I can just leave some tabs open? Also, too many sites are poorly designed and the desired data can’t be directly accessed from a URL.

    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      2·
      2 hours ago

      Didn’t Linus do some completely absurd tab setup a few years ago? They had like a crazy amount of ram, and started opening thousands of tabs to see if they can max out the ram or whatever. I’m pretty sure Linus has the bragging rights when it comes to tab count.

      When you accumulate hundreds of tabs as a part of normal everyday life, that just looks messy and unorganized to me. Maybe this post will enlighten me. Maybe there is a valid use case other than stress testing hardware.

      BTW that with 500 tabs also uses the desktop as a dumping for all their digital trash and treasures. It’s true, some people really do live in chaos.

    • lime!@feddit.nu
      1·
      2 hours ago

      i use hundreds of tabs, have disabled desktop icons, and run inbox zero. i refuse to fit in your boxes!

      • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        58 minutes ago

        Okay, I was curious what Inbox Zero is, and I went ‘ew’ at the ‘ai’ angle, but then I fucking lost it when I got to the prices. They want $18 a month (per user) on the annual plan, to:

        • basically tags your email, which you can set up yourself using folders, and probably near identical through gmail or something
        • get ai replies written up for you… which I think gmail also does now
        • ‘blocks cold emails’ which is just the spam filter with a fresh coat of paint
        • ‘bulk unsubscibed / archive’… you can do that in most modern email clients? I guess not in bulk but how many shitty newsletters and promos do you subscribe to, really?
        • and an ‘analysis’ of your email…?

        I do everything except the ai replies through cpanel and my email client, for free. Fucking hell, that’s almost 3x what I pay for my web/email hosting. And I don’t have to prepay for a year of service, and I get way more granular control over incoming messages. That service is highway robbery, and they have 15k users?! What the actual fuck. $18 a year, kinda high, but a fucking month…