
Ask HN: What do you do about too many open browser tabs? - linsomniac
I have an illness...  I come across interesting things and open them in a new tab, and about half of them (maybe 2&#x2F;3) I read and close.  The remainder I leave open to revisit (either to read later or to do something more with them).  I seem to have around 30 tabs open on my chromebook right now, and my work computer probably has north of 100.  I&#x27;ve used OneTab, where I can park open tabs, but I&#x27;ve found that I almost never go back and do anything with them.  While it&#x27;s effectively closing the tab, it is somewhat easier, emotionally than just closing it, so I guess that&#x27;s a win.  But honestly I might as well just close them.  Any silver bullets for this situation?
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is_true
Use the bookmark function. And for performance reasons you have plugins like
tab suspender.

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linsomniac
I wasn't familiar with Tab Suspender. I ended up installing The Great
Suspender to see if that will help with some of the performance problems I was
having when I had a lot of tabs open. That's part of the pain is having all
those tabs open can lead to my browser crawling sometimes, particularly when
this particularly heavyweight backup job runs (restic).

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erric
Slightly off the main topic, however I’ve been super happy with Restic!

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linsomniac
I wanted to use it to back up 100 servers to a single, deduplicated
repository. That didn't work, once I got a couple backups done, the amount of
CPU and memory restic consumed was shocking. I still run it on my desktop, and
for around an hour it brings it to it's knees. I prefer borg, except for never
being able to figure out how to get past that Unicode filename that I couldn't
get it to recover. :-( But no deduplication across backups. So my main backups
are still in rsync/zfs.

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drstewart
I can't empathize with anyone in this thread. When I get to about 8-10 tabs, I
start feeling antsy and start closing them down.

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seanwilson
Same. Once I have too many I drag a couple of them to the left, then do a
right-click followed by "close all tabs to the right". I'm not saying I'm
doing things the best way but I don't understand how having 100s of tabs open
is productive. Seems like an indication you're trying to do too much at the
same time to me.

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pasbesoin
I used to use the Firefox extension Scrapbook. Damned shame that the switch to
web extensions broke it.

I also think -- and have observed -- that continuing access is only ensured
when you have a local copy. Scrapbook was very useful for this.

Just the other day, I wanted to refer someone to a very pertinent resource. To
find that that page is gone. In this case, I was able to cite an archive.org
link. However, those are currently susceptible to robots.txt retroactive
removal.

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vxxzy
I end up in your situation often, 100s of tabs, 10s of windows. I do feel that
"pull" to not close them, for fear of lost information, but, I quickly realize
that I have browser history. If ever I _really_ needed to go back, I can
always search there. Once I reach that realization, I close them all out and
start over!

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rahimnathwani
When you feel like you need to eat a muffin, instead hold ctrl and press w a
bunch of times.

Two birds with one stone.

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erric
I’m on a Mac. I have tried this but nothing happens, and I still want a moofin

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grizzles
Same problem. I had a chrome extension that was supposed to close inactive
tabs after n mins but it doesn't seem to work right. I periodically go on
cleaning runs but it doesn't help much.

Even though I use them extensively, I'm very suspicious that Chrome somehow
loses my bookmarks. I'm often in the situation where I want to find something
I am 100% sure I read+bookmarked recently and can't find the article on my
laptop or my desktop.

So I don't know what the answer is but one possible route would be a better
bookmark+sync system, fully under my control that stores DOM snapshots too for
full text search.

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MilnerRoute
Here's an idea. All the tabs you've opened are in your browser history.

So in theory you could go back and re-read all those tabs later just by
accessing them there....

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cimmanom
If performance is a problem, maybe switch to Firefox. They've done some work
that's been demonstrated to specifically to handle the hundreds of tabs edge
case smoothly.

[https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-
hoarder/](https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/)

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linsomniac
I've been tempted to go back to Firefox, but it's kind of hard. I put up with
Firefox for a very long time before moving to Chrome, and it's hard for me to
go back. Part of it is that I suffered with really pretty crappy performance
for so long, that when I changed, Chrome was so clearly better that I felt
like my trust in Firefox had been broken. Part of it is that I feel like I
have a lot of things in Chrome (saved passwords, extensions, configurations).
I've been running one Firefox browser for running another session, just to get
back to getting familiar with it and see how it does.

Firefox performance does seem dramatically better in the last year since I
tried it seriously. Maybe 18 months. I think the multiple processes rollout
really helped.

So, it's an option in my pocket. But I'm hoping to find a workflow that
changes my habits, rather than just enabling my old ones. :-)

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oceanghost
On firefox-- I use the tab suspension plugin. After 15 mins it unloads the
tab.

I read anything that catches my eye immediately.

I "pocket" articles which are things I might want to have access to later but
am not interested in now.

I add the things I should read but maybe don't want to now-- to a reading list
plugin.

Anything I can't make a decision about-- I wait a day and 90% of the time I
lose interest in it.

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akulbe
OneTab extension is your friend. :)

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guilhas
For me the correct is do not "remember tabs from last time", and bookmak all
before closing browser. Folder like "home20180626".

If I need them they are there, and they don't cause me anxiety, spend ram, or
cause visual overhead.

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miklose
Check out Toby, it works for me :) You can use it to organize your tabs into
different buckets: [https://www.gettoby.com/](https://www.gettoby.com/)

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linsomniac
Thanks for the pointer. It seems oriented towards a team or company, but I
think it could easily serve as a "better OneTab". And at that, it's better at
pretty much everything except that you have to sign up for it as a service
rather than storing it locally.

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iagovar
Just close them. I feel the pain, but you have to, it's like drug.

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st3fan
I close them

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gjvc
Reboot occasionally. Clear the decks. What is there to make a fuss about?

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linsomniac
Thing is... The browsers will restart, opening the same tabs. ;-/

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jxub
Firefox. So much better than Chrome at keeping many tabs open at once.

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iron0012
I am the same as you. Way worse, actually. When things get really bad (e.g.
500+ open tabs in Firefox), I spend ~20 minutes closing as many obviously
"left-over" and otherwise uninteresting tabs, and then I save all of the
remaining tabs to a new folder of bookmarks, then close the window. It's not
ideal, but it does make sure that "potentially interesting" things I've seen
don't get lost forever in the internet ether.

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eip
Get a better computer. Why limit yourself?

> I seem to have around 30 tabs open on my chromebook

Those are rookie numbers.

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linsomniac
What do you suggest? I have a i7-7700 with 64GB RAM and a Samsung 860-PRO SSD.
Is there any suggestion that doesn't involve a couple grand investment? :-)

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eip
That should be sufficient for hundreds if not thousands of tabs. Maybe get a
better OS.

