this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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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?

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[–] calcopiritus@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago

Yeah I don't get it, some people have 100s, dude that is what bookmarks are for.

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago

For me it's because I have ADHD and thrive among organized clutter.

I may have 100 tabs open, but they're all categorized: One tab group for YouTube, one for porn, one for my website, and one for everything else. I keep stuff in there that's good enough to hang onto for a while, but not good enough to bookmark.

[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I'm a tab-o-holic. I probably have ADD. I don't know but I'll start researching something and if I don't finish that research before moving on to something else or if the need for the research is postponed, I don't want to lose what I was doing.

Also there are sites I go to everyday, email, calendar, YouTube, so I just leave them up all of the time.

Somebody help me!!

[–] zephiriz@lemmy.ml 14 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

You know when you make a sandwich or some buttered toast and you set the knife carefully on the edge of the sink. Well because you might decided to make another sandwich latter or your SO goes that looks good can I get one too. And bam your the hero because you now have one less knife to clean in the dishwasher.

That is why I have so many tabs open. I know I probably won't need most of them and it's safe to close them. But oh dang do I feel like a hero when I get that itch for a video I want to watch and I don't have to look through my history for next 20 minutes because, bam, its right their in that tab.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 minutes ago

That’s a pretty good analogy.

There are some YT playlists I visit every now and then. Maybe I should just keep them open all the time…

[–] Lag@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Especially at work when you might need a combination of those 3 tabs from last month.

[–] zephiriz@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 hours ago

Shhh. I was mainly talking about porn.... But yes that works too. 😏

[–] MissingGhost@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 hours ago

People that don't know advanced ways to organise bookmarks.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

I regularly sit at anywhere from a thousand to several thousand tabs on my desktop browser. I have a tab-counter extension.

I use tree-style tabs. I use this to organize thoughts into groups, or families, hierarchically, with varying levels and numbers of tabs, depending on topic and my interest.

Most tabs are unloaded. I do close and reopen my browser regularly, and restart my pc. I just have the browser remember the tabs in it.

I do occasionally revisit and complete families of tabs. Sometimes I'll queue up loads of things to read on a subject, so that nothing ever has to load or reload.

Tabs are like a working space to me, kind of like working memory in your brain.

Sometimes I'll load in several searches at once.

I have ADHD.

I am also a very passionate and try to be a very thorough person.

I generally do things top-down when researching, but also casually search.

I have waves of purging, myself, but also will randomly close tabs or trees if they are complete or exhausted.

Like once a year or so, the browser has a stroke and decides to flush everything away and I'm sad for a couple weeks.

I have lost amazing things and nearly exhaustive subjects, that alone have been hundreds of tabs.

An example of which was a (near) 100% collection of a web archive that had a complete list and archive of a lost website and organization that personally means a lot to me. I had separated its history into eras, and had found and organized nearly all of a thing that had ever been made by the organization. It's extremely nitpicky and claims almost no storage in my mind or pc. Think of it like data hoarding or zombifying something I deem important and culturally significant. Nearly impossible to do automatedly, and I wouldn't want nor trust a bot to do it, so I did it myself, by hand, in line with a hobby.

[–] Luckaneer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

This really resonates with me. At least in the sense I operate like this without the tree structure but would vastly benefit from it. If you don't mind my asking, what browser and extensions do you use?

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 hours ago

Firefox and https://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_treestyletab.html.en That's the creators page, but it's also on the Mozilla site.

I use a bunch of other stuff too, that synergizes and whatnot, but that's the tree style tabs that I've been using since like 2011. I've also been telling people that this is the future the entire time, and nobody ever believes me. But that's fine, it's going to be an inevitable option. But maybe at this rate, the internet will die before people adopt tree tabs hahaha.

If you do use that extension, I suggest going through the options, as it's pretty well fleshed out. An option that makes a big difference to me is the the theme or whatever, to clearly see the boxes around each tab, and therefore the indentation. Another meaningful option is the tree behavior that auto-collapses the tree is you open a new one - I don't like that, and prefer the trees stay option and me in control. But to each their own. After all, this is all just tools for you to optimize and explore.

[–] Botunda@lemmy.world 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Because I'm going to need those! Not this second / day / week / month, but I'm going to need those and I have way too many bookmarks!

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 hours ago

Speaking of bookmarks, some people have recommended using Raindrop for managing that mess. I’m still testing it, so I don’t really know if it ends up being useful for me. Might wanna take a look anyway.

The need to store things for later is very real, and I totally understand that. I prefer to think of tabs as a very transient storage place, but apparently there are lots of people who treat them as something far more permanent.

[–] 87Six@lemmy.zip 1 points 8 hours ago

Because people are overworked or overwhelmed, in my experience.

I noticed that people who are laid back and or relaxed for whatever reason, will close them.

On the other hand, people I know that regularly overwork themselves have a billion tabs open all the time.

They could also be tech illiterate I guess.

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Because I want to and it's weird that it bothers you.

Let's explore that instead.

What allows you to assume you're not the abnormal one?

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[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Some tabs are for ongoing things that I keep coming back to, though I don't have as many of those these days. Like back in the day, I'd have a facebook tab, a few reddit tabs, etc.

Other tabs are for things that I'm not done with in general but was done with for that moment because something else came up or I just wanted to do something else and the task wasn't urgent enough to stick with it.

Sometimes I get back to it, finish the task, and close the tab. Sometimes I'll later see the tab and just close it because I decide I am done with it forever (or done enough that I can find it again if I want to go back to it).

I like it better than not keeping my tabs. Though I did disable the inactive tabs thing on mobile firefox because those were too out of sight and just piled up (along with the ambiguous behaviour where sometimes backing up closes newly opened tabs, sometimes it doesn't, or I don't back up all the way). Mobile tabs feel a bit more like bookmarks, which are more likely to just disappear entirely from my mind. Visual tabs serve as reminders of the thing.

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 11 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

its kind of "log", so i dont forget about some website or it displays what i have been doing earlier. Kind of temporary bookmark

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 hours ago

Yeah, that seems like a good way to use tabs.

However, eventually they have a tendency to accumulate and fill the entire tab bar to such an extent that you can no longer even see the names. Some people like to roll that way, and I’m trying to figure out what’s going with that.

Some people don’t let them accumulate much, but others do. The key difference seems to be how often do you close the tabs. If you close them rarely enough that you still have 100+ tabs open all the time, that’s the kind of situation I have questions about.

[–] sonofearth@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I can’t even have 5 tabs open even if I try. I always close a tab when I am done with it.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 29 minutes ago

At least the tabs start under control.

[–] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
  • 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

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago

I purge them as often as I can, but my phone has some tab groups that just stay up perpetually because it's convenient, and it's not like they're actually all loaded at once. for example I have a few tab groups on vehicle maintenance topic or two that I am slowly working on. chrome on android has tab groups that basically functions as a favourites menu

but yeah on a computer, I have about a dozen core tabs for work that stay pinned on one window at all times, and then I add 1-3 other windows throughout the day as I work. one or two might just be a couple tabs each for comparing stuff. one might be a temp window for tasks somebody asked me to look into when I have a couple spare minutes. one might be a bunch of tabs doing research on something. but they either get processed and completed, or written down to deal with another day, I don't keep them up until the next day unless I'm really just over work that day lol

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