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
    64·
    3 days 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
      7·
      3 days 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
        3·
        2 days ago

        Can confirm. Nowadays the URL doesn’t really say much. Even if you bookmark something, what you see there isn’t really saved anywhere. The link will lead you to something that’s somewhere in the approximate neighborhood, but not exactly what you wanted to save.

        One of these first world problems again…

    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      I think it’s closely related to people with tens of thousands of emails in their inbox,

      Nope.

      I have a half dozen email address, about 20 aliases.

      My inbox rarely has even 5 unopened emails.

      I have 100+ tabs on desktop, over 100 on phone.

    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      3·
      3 days 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.