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?
After hearing so many recommendations for Sidebery, I finally had the perfect chance to test it out. I was searching for a specific YouTube video I’d seen almost a year ago. Zero idea who made it or the exact title was, just the general topic and a few probable keywords. Even with Gemini’s fancy AI crap and Google integrations, it was a dead end.
I tried various search terms and ended up with a mountain of tabs. That’s when I realized I needed to organize the chaos, and Sidebery was a lifesaver. RAM usage hit about 14 GB, but I finally found the video.
I created three tab panels: one for the main topic, another for interesting but unrelated finds, and a third for random stuff to revisit later today. Sidebery can close duplicates and move tabs between panels, and that made it much easier to manage everything. Regular tabs just can’t handle this kind of workflow.
This experience really drove home why people use dedicated tab managers. Keeping everything in a single row still feels bizarre to me, but with the right tools, having a 100 tabs open is completely understandable.