
Google to Remove Chrome “Close Other Tabs” and “Close Tabs to the Right” Options - aaron695
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-to-remove-chrome-close-other-tabs-andamp-close-tabs-to-the-right-options/
======
jredwards
There's a chrome extension called 'OneTab' that I tend to use for this purpose
anyway.

You can whitelist certain websites (for instance, I whitelist email because I
want to keep it open and AWS because the login is a pain).

Any time I feel like my current stash of tabs is out of control, I hit the
onetab button and everything that's not that important gets archived into an
html file that's automatically opened in a tab when the button is pressed (so
10+ tabs get archived down into one). This way I can clean up my tab mess
without losing anything.

[https://www.one-tab.com/](https://www.one-tab.com/)

(I am not affiliated)

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maxmcd
In case it's helpful: in Chrome you can shift-click and select ranges of tabs
and close them all at once.

~~~
CharlesW
Wow! My first thought was, "How would _anyone_ discover that?" How did you?

~~~
abrowne
I discovered it ... by reading the linked article to the end. Now if they knew
about it _before_ I'd like to know how ;-)

~~~
stevep98
I tried shift-clicking a range of tabs on a whim about a year ago, and it
worked.

Once you've done that, you can drag the whole selection into another window or
a new window too.

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echelon
Chrome is becoming the browser of the masses. Power user usability features
are disappearing. I'm still upset over the removal of the backspace key as
"back" navigation.

I shouldn't need an extension for this.

~~~
FreakyT
> the backspace key as "back" navigation

That was a ridiculous usability nightmare and was only popular due to muscle
memory from IE doing it long ago (it was a terrible decision back then, too).

Good riddance to it, may no one ever again unfocus a form field by accident
and wipe out an entire form with a single keypress.

~~~
reneherse
Good riddance indeed! A big thank you from me and my blood pressure to the
developers who finally pushed through the removal of that godforsaken
nightmare of a human interface feature :)

~~~
btschaegg
Agreed, and although I get that patches breaking muscle memory are annoying,
the potential downsides to that are so disastrous that the arguments around it
puzzle me quite a bit to this day.

In fact, the whole conversation surrounding this issue made me see for that,
although hyperbolic, XKCD 1172 [1] actually isn't _that_ contrived...

[1]: [https://xkcd.com/1172/](https://xkcd.com/1172/)

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maxxxxx
"close other tabs" is the only option I use. Good to know they are removing
it!

~~~
witty_username
That can be easily done by dragging the tab into another window and closing
the window with the other tabs.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Yes. Easily. Very convenient having three context switches. First you drag out
the tab, it maximizes in its own window, you minimize that window, you go back
to the other window, close it, then find the window you just created. Much
better than two mouse clicks, I'm sure.

~~~
witty_username
drag tab → alt-tab → alt-f4

It's not as easy as the two mouse clicks though.

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sirspacey
I live and die by these two cmds on my browser. wow. how else do people manage
the avalanche of tabs that is browsing today?

~~~
ams6110
As someone who rarely has more than a few tabs open, I honestly don't get
this. What are you doing with so many tabs?

~~~
lparry
I can't speak for the other commenters, but for me it's because my browsing
style was formed back in the days of dialup in Australia. You'd click a link
and wait 30+ seconds to have the page load, so instead of staring a loading
page you'd open anything that looked interesting in a new tab and continue on
the current page, so all the interesting links would be there ready to read
without waiting. invariably you wouldn't end up having enough time to read
them all, but they piqued your interest enough to open them, so you'd keep
them around in the hope that some time later you would. Rinse, lather, repeat,
and add in persistent browser sessions between restarts and suddenly you've
got 100+ tabs open.

The internet is much faster these days, but I still open way more links than I
actually have time to read because they sound interesting

~~~
pvinis
I do that with HN actually. I visit between a few times a day and once every
second day. I open whatever I think is interesting. Usually 1-10 tabs every
time I go to HN. then I spend time in one or two tabs and read a lot, and
close these two. Then I still have 8 tabs open. Second step is repeat. Third
step is I have 400 tabs open.

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colept
I use these everyday, they better have flags to re-enable them. Would be
annoying to have to drag a tab to a new window and close the other window.

~~~
wry_discontent
I don't understand why it's preferable to remove the functionality vs having
some better settings that allow me to customize my browser experience.

~~~
BrailleHunting
Because "old" is "bad." Throw away everything that makes people happy and
start with reinventing the wheel. Also, corporations are slow, unresponsive
and inconsiderate because incompetent people can hide and also bureaucracy.

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dragonwriter
What else needs the menu space, since competition for menu space seems to be
the sole justification?

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chii
Switch to firefox, before google's heavyweight prowess forces it out of the
market!

~~~
BrailleHunting
Firefox on macOS takes an _order of magnitude longer_ to start or do anything
than Chromium (Chrome, Opera) or Safari.

~~~
chii
may be, or may be not. However, does it really matter how long the browser
takes to start when you don't ever really close the browser (but only the
tabs)?

~~~
alphaomegacode
As someone that likes the stated Mozilla mission and always wished them the
best, I unfortunately have to agree with /BrailleHunting about Firefox
performance on Mac OS.

Not only does FF take a while to start up but when it is loading a mildly
heavy page or even after updating, it can freeze up for several (as in 10-20)
seconds.

~~~
mercer
Damn. I tried switching back to Firefox with the assumption that these issues
were fixed. After using it for the past few days, it really 'felt' dog-slow,
but I assumed it was just prejudice on my end :-/.

~~~
greglindahl
Huh. Doesn't happen to me. I'd suggest using about:memory to see if you have a
leaky tab. In my case, it used to be that my FB and Twitter tabs both leaked a
lot. I stopped leaving Twitter open and FB (or Firefox) seems to have fixed
their problem.

~~~
mercer
Yeah, I tried that. the about:memory usage reported is much lower (and strikes
me as more reasonable).

I use an unload tab extension so currently there should be no 'open' tabs.
Memory usage is at 1.5Gb though. It doesn't seem to go much higher or lower,
though, so could it be that FF just takes/keeps the RAM it can get and doesn't
bother to unload stuff?

It's also true that my MacBook has become slower in general since I updated to
the latest MacOS, so perhaps it's not FF fault. Still, very annoying.

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KayL
So sad! Don't want to install 2 more plugins. (Chrome doesn't allow more than
one top-level menu item in a plugin)

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joshstrange
Well I hope there is an extension to get those options back as I used them
regularly to to "reset" after I've solved a problem or moved on to a new
ticket and see I've got some 15 tabs open for research that I no longer need.
Really they are removing this and leaving in "Bookmark all tabs"? Are you
kidding me, what a stupid thing to leave in if you are so concerned about
context menu space...

~~~
stevep98
I use "bookmark all tabs" quite a bit. If I've got 15 tabs open for research
that I want to read later...

~~~
joshstrange
Hmm, interesting way of using it. I've used extensions in the past to save off
a group of tabs but I wouldn't want them in my bookmarks as I view them as
temporary.

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joelcollinsdc
The issue comments say as of 2 days ago they are no longer considering
removing CTTR. Whew.

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bhaumik
Usage stats, from article:

\- Duplicate: 23.21%

\- Reload: 22.74%

\- Pin / Unpin tab: 13.12%

\- Close tab: 9.68%

\- Reopen closed tab: 8.92%

\- New tab: 6.63%

\- Close tabs to the right: 6.06%

\- Mute tab: 5.38%

\- Close other tabs: 2.20%

\- Unmute tab: 1.41%

\- Bookmark all tabs: 0.64%

~~~
FreakyT
Part of the 6.06%!

I will definitely miss the close tabs to the right option. Interesting that
Duplicate is so popular; I've never really used it for anything, ever.

~~~
mos_basik
I use it a lot when developing - I'll have a tab open and then I'll want
another tab of the same URL except for a slightly different port number or
hostname. I find it faster to duplicate the tab, make the change and hit enter
than to select the URL, open a new tab, paste the URL, make the change and hit
enter.

I use it so much that I finally tracked down how to do it with the keyboard:
Alt-D, Alt-Enter. (Shift focus to the address bar and select its contents;
open a new tab with the contents of your selection).

Then I started using a computer with a Model M keyboard with no Windows key
and had to remap my i3 modifier to Alt on all my computers to fix my muscle
memory. Alt-D is the default shortcut for dmenu, i3's default program
launcher, and i3 intercepted shortcuts before chrome. So I eventually rebound
dmenu to a totally unmnemonic Alt-C... but now I've realized that Vimium
allows me to duplicate tabs by typing yyP ("yy" yank contents of address bar
to clipboard, "P" open new tab with current contents of clipboard).

All this to say, I love my duplicate tabs and these 6%ers who love killing
tabs (but just to the right) are weirdos.

~~~
acuriousmind
Thank you so much for this.

Duplicating tabs is by far my most used feature out of that menu for me and it
always irked me that there was no keyboard shortcut available for it and I had
to resort to using the mouse to do it (the amount of time lost hitting "Pin
tab" or "Reload" by accident - I cannot even begin to tell). That being said,
I didn't go out of my way to google for a workaround, either. Maybe, with all
the features (or rather what's left) being taken away, I figured there was no
hope (but for a dedicated extension) to achieve it.

I will now have to retrain my muscle memory to replace the ordeal before with
just Alt-D, Alt-Enter - I don't think it will take long at all.

btw remember the old Opera? Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts (not to even
mention customizable Mouse Gestures) - wherever did we lose all this along the
way...

Is it really necessary to "optimize" a menu that is mostly unused by everyone
(I agree on the point that it's a crowded menu - I'd really _love_ to be able
to configure the entries I want in there, but that option is apparently not
even on anyone's mind at chrome)

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captainmuon
What I'd love though is an option to manage tabs by filter.

\- Click a button (or press a hotkey). A popup with a list of all tabs
appears.

\- Enter `hackern` (or ny or something similar) to filter the list down to
hacker news tabs.

\- Click Close Selected (you could also do "move to new window").

One day I'm going to write a plugin for this, unless somebody reads this and
steals the idea :-)

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stymaar
Is that also going to disappear from atom and other electron apps ? Or is this
feature re-implemented in electron itself ?

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jessaustin
It won't be long before these features are written into an extension. Then the
6% of users who use them can install that extension.

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KiDD
I'm pretty upset to hear this... I actually use that feature everyday!

I don't care for the keyboard shortcuts very much

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frik
I want a Ctrl + K shortcut.

In IE it dublicated the current tab including the browsing history. It was
sooo useful.

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unnikked
Just when I started to get used to it! Oh Google!

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yesusalgusti
sad news for me, I use both every single time :(

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gaspoweredcat
well that settles it, im changing browser

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dbg31415
Do non-power users even right-click on tabs? Literally what is the issue with
having the option if I right-click? Fucking stupid to take it out, it's just
another nudge back towards Firefox...

~~~
mercer
Yeah, well, I gave it a shot with some ideological reasons to boot and based
on comments here and my own experiences I'll probably move back to Chrome
soon. Fourth time this happened. I'm starting to wonder if either there's
something wrong with Mozilla as a company, or if they just can't compete with
the money Google is throwing at this. Either option is depressing, even if
just because I love Tree Style Tabs.

