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A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

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Re: A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

#41

Post by cosmic_cheese »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #32
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #5

Aligning with the linked post, I've found that tab hoarding is directly connected to exceedingly poor bookmark UX/UI in browsers. Despite being a core browser feature, it's barely improved in decades, with the most radical change having been Arc's decision to cut out bookmarks altogether (which I don't think is right either). Bookmark management sucks and is too high friction for my brain to willingly engage in it. T…

Absolutely don't agree. I'm a tab hoarder (currently have 2084 tabs). I don't use builtin browser facilities, but instead use sideberry. I've tried a lot of other tab mgmt approaches too. Some were excellent, some were far from it. The one thing they all have in common: they cannot stop me from being tab hoarder. That behavior (in my case, and I suspect I am not alone) is not impacted by tab/bookmark mgmt approaches,…

I tried Sidebery for a while among other vertical tab extensions and found them all too flaky and tacked-on-feeling for my taste. Needing to edit userCSS to hide the redundant tab bar kind of sucked too. Now I don't use vertical tabs unless the browser has them built in as a first-class feature.

Re: A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

#42

Post by ElijahLynn »

Protip for a brain reset - right click on current tab - click close other tabs

The beauty here is that if you are at risk of losing anything, in a form that is not yet submitted, then the browser will pop up a prompt saying are you sure you want to close, you will lose data. So there is no risk of losing something you can't get back.

Then, after they are all closed, as needed, I just type in the browser bar the names of the tabs and it searches history and suggests previously closed tabs, then up/down arrow, then enter.

I do this frequently and it really helps my brain.

Re: A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

#43

Post by sixtyj »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #5

Aligning with the linked post, I've found that tab hoarding is directly connected to exceedingly poor bookmark UX/UI in browsers. Despite being a core browser feature, it's barely improved in decades, with the most radical change having been Arc's decision to cut out bookmarks altogether (which I don't think is right either). Bookmark management sucks and is too high friction for my brain to willingly engage in it. T…

Yes, I agree, there is one exception.

Onetab add-on in FF works fine. After every work you just “onetab” all tabs. It is flat structure, so I usually store similar tabs into one box.

There are 2 features: restore all tabs into browser. And fulltext search is easier.

I was a tab hoarder too. I am cured now as Onetab helped me a lot. (No affil. here.)

Re: A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

#44

Post by cosmic_cheese »

temp0826 wrote: post #40
ashleyn wrote: post #17

It boggles my mind that, not only do people do this, but it's common . I've seen managers at work with hundreds of tabs open, with an uncanny ability to know exactly where the thing they need is. I've been using tabbed browsers for 20-something years and I never really have more than 1, 2 at a time. If I need to call something back, I either bookmark it or I open up the history and search for it.

My tab hoarding has evolved a bit. I use separate windows that are mostly subject-based now. I might have an Amazon window that sticks around for several days that will explode with tabs before I decide to put in an order. If I get on a Factorio kick I end up with a window with dozens of blueprints and forum posts that will stay for a few months (until I get bored/overwhelmed with the game again...it's a cycle, that…

This is similar to my usage patterns. If the browser has native "spaces" support (like Arc, Zen, and Orion do), replace windows with spaces.

Re: A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

#45

Post by ElijahLynn »

ElijahLynn wrote: post #42

Protip for a brain reset - right click on current tab - click close other tabs The beauty here is that if you are at risk of losing anything, in a form that is not yet submitted, then the browser will pop up a prompt saying are you sure you want to close, you will lose data. So there is no risk of losing something you can't get back. Then, after they are all closed, as needed, I just type in the browser bar the names…

Second protip - the tab manager search is really useful, it will list out currently open and previously closed tabs for scanning, with a search feature. So searching open tabs is really fast, on Mac it is cmd + chift + a (think tAb).

Re: A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

#46

Post by quesera »

kvemkon wrote: post #20

> 300+ on my Mac. "Firefox power user kept 7,500 tabs open for two years" (04.08.2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41156568

I currently have 20,097 tabs open in one browser profile. The oldest tab appears to be an HN post from 2.5 years ago, which must be the last time I swept tabs into bookmarks.

I used to sweep them more regularly, but Firefox + Sidebery don't even break a sweat with 20K tabs, apparently, so why bother?

The only downside is that it takes about 15 seconds for the browser to launch. I restart the browser whenever Firefox or macOS is updated, so every week or two.

Re: A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

#48

Post by chankstein38 »

apercu wrote: post #6
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #5

Aligning with the linked post, I've found that tab hoarding is directly connected to exceedingly poor bookmark UX/UI in browsers. Despite being a core browser feature, it's barely improved in decades, with the most radical change having been Arc's decision to cut out bookmarks altogether (which I don't think is right either). Bookmark management sucks and is too high friction for my brain to willingly engage in it. T…

> Aligning with the linked post, I've found that tab hoarding is directly connected to exceedingly poor bookmark UX/UI in browsers It's also related to the fact that since ~2010, the quality/efficacy of "search" has gone downhill and you'll never find anything again.

Tangent, I was searching for 3mm spherical magnets last night and literally every retailer's search is total garbage and delivered any kind of magnet you can imagine while occasionally sprinkling in things that were vaguely related to "3mm spherical magnets"

I don't understand how it's useful to anyone, even the companies. I just leave without buying things so why would their searches not just search for the specific thing that I ask for?

Re: A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

#49

Post by chankstein38 »

nathan_compton wrote: post #47

I just close my browser and all tabs all the time. I cannot understand why this bothers people so much. I don't even bookmark stuff. If its important, I just remember it.

Because some people might have 10 different things they're doing in any given day and sometimes their ADHD distracts them from one thing to the other and you don't want to lose all that context.

The article does actually explicitly address this as well.

>I do this because I have ADHD and I'm a visual thinker. if I don't see something, I forget it exists. So I keep tabs open, group them by project, save things to read later. Before I know it, I have another browser window with multiple tabs sprawling across my screen.

Which mirrors my experience. My brain can obsess over things all it wants but if I don't see that set of tabs open roughly in the same order as I had them then I am promptly forgetting about that. I've gone through setting things up before only to realize a week before I had done the same thing in a different spot that I didn't name very well.

Re: A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

#50

Post by nickthegreek »

ixxie wrote: post #21

I've recently migrated to Zen [0] and its a breath of fresh air. I agree with comments arguing bad bookmark UX is part of the problem. Zen's approach is a vertical tab sidebar with workspaces and folders. Crucially, it distinguishes pinned and ephemeral tabs. The approach is much more natural to me than either bookmarks and tradition tabs. [0] https://zen-browser.app/

Love Zen's approach to tabs. I just wish that folders didnt have to live in the pinned area and could be down with all my junk tabs.
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