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.

Those long projects are a proper use case I don’t really have much experience with. I would probably just end up bookmarking them and opening the sites when I need them.

However, tracking progress is a whole different thing. That’s a very valid use case IMO. Bokmarks just weren’t built for that sort of thing, whereas an open tab works perfectly. Actually, some other people have also pointed out that an open tab will store the place where you were. For example, if it’s a long article, it knows exactly how far you’ve scrolled and it will allow you to easily pick up where you left off last time. That is something I rarely do, but now I can definitely see the value in keeping those tabs open.

Keeping the interest active is also a pretty good point. If the tab is open, it will remind you of its existence. If you bookmark a site, it will be very easy to forget it ever existed. You would have to actively seek it out to be reminded of it. As some other people have already said: bookmarks is the place where tabs go to die.

Just installed it and started dumping some of my transient tabs in it.

For example, I have some ideas for the next vacation, so I made a folder for that purpose and dropped a bunch of relevant links in there. I’ll get back to those sooner or later. No need to keep 10 tabs open for a few months, when I can keep my tab bar clean and dump all the unnecessary clutter to Raindrop. So far, I’m still using it in a very basic way, but let’s see what this develops into.

In my case, that clan tab bar may have something to do with my personal preference for tidyness and a sense of control. Other people obviously have different needs and preferences, and that’s ok. Maybe tab hoarders aren’t annoyed by a cluttered UI. Maybe they even see some value in it.

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.

And other ways don’t work because….

That sounds awesome!

Can you give some examples where that browser has made a big difference? What are the kinds of situations where it really shines?

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.

That visibility seems to be a reoccurring theme in this thread. Some other people have brought that up as well.

On one hand I totally get it that if you see 10 tabs open all the time, they remind you of the 10 things you were planning to get back to at some point. On the other hand, I’m a bit skeptical about how functional that really is. I guess there is a way to make it work, otherwise nobody would do it that way.

What about 50 tabs? Does it still work that way? If you have a 100 tabs, you can’t even read the names any more, so it’s just one pile at that point, isn’t it. Although, some people treat that as a timeline of sorts, so I guess there can be some order too.

Anyway, recently I bumped into Raindrop, which seems to be like Pocket, but better. Still testing it, so I can’t tell you much yet. So far, it seems to be pretty good at organizing the stuff you throw in there.

Care to elaborate? Some people with ADHD hate seeing tabs, and they close all tabs as soon as possible.

When I sort by “last visited” I tend to find things rather quickly. Have you tried that yet? The other sorting options are pretty much useless IMO.

This is the way. Last visited is the only option that actually makes any sense.

Wait, so it caches the page too? If the site goes offline, you have your personal copy anyway? That’s a bit like the internet archive, isn’t it?

There are worse harding habits. Videos, photos, physical items etc.

Achievement unlocked! 🤣

How does the speed matter in this case? It’s not like gigabytes of stuff gets read and written all the time.

Sounds reasonable. I do that all the time, but I also close the tabs as soon as I stop caring about them. Do you end up having hundreds of tabs open?

Mobile tabs are a bit different though, because the system manages RAM so aggressively. With computers though, running out of RAM is usually the user’s fault. If a mobile OS runs out of RAM, it just kicks stuff out, like that Lemmy client where you were writing a comment and then decided to check something on wikipedia before posting.

Same thing with tabs too. Those two week old tabs haven’t been active in a long time.

And that’s the reason why some people have 100+ tabs open? Yeah, I guess you can hide pretty much anything in numbers like that. Once the tab bar is completely full and unreadable, who knows what kinds of secrets there could be. Coworkers can walk by and they have no idea what’s just a few tabs away.

That’s understandable. But why keep them in tabs though? Other people here have recommended a variety of different approaches.

More than a few people have also mentioned Raindrop. Completely new to me. Haven’t tried that one yet, but I’m planning to take a closer look.

Even those 500 tabs in mobile Safari?