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?

  • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
    4·
    7 小时前

    Simple.

    1. I’m reading tab A
    2. Tab A links to tab B
    3. Open B in new tab, since I know I’m going back to tab A soon.
    4. Go to tab A
    5. Go to tab B again
    6. I’m finished reading tab B so I close it.

    Notice how I didn’t close tab A. Because at that point, I was not in tab A, therefore I don’t think about that tab much so I don’t even think if I should close it or not. Tab A will probably stay open until I decide to clean my tabs when there are 50+ tabs on them.

    Another common scenario:

    1. I’m reading tab C
    2. Something comes up that makes me either switch to another task or shut down the computer

    From this point there are 2 paths: either I never resume the task I opened tab C for, so it stays there for a long time, or I resume the task when tab C is too far up (I use vertical tabs), so I open tab D that is the same webpage as tab C. When I finish I close tab D, but tab C remains for a long time.