Ask HN: How to deal with hundreds of open browser tabs | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to deal with hundreds of open browser tabs

4 pointsgetcrunk15 comments

Im sure many of the people on here have the same issue as me of having hundreds of tabs open. I use windows virtual desktops and occasionally even different browsers or profiles to segment further. but that's managing the problem. how do I stop it at its root? What have you guys found that works.

A typical situation unfolds as follows. I open my core set of windows/tabs to do work or personal. then for either scenario i need to go on a tangent but still need the old stuff open for when i need to go back but then i don't finish tangent 1 and then tanget 2 starts ... and then I have 300+ tabs in chrome and 200+ in ff. the only way it resets is when the browser crashes and looses all its data. which is rare but happens. and adding in the virtual desktops compounded the issue, cus ill reserve on desktop for a certain category of stuff then not go back to it for a while and now I'm opening more virtual desktops

I feel your pain. I have often reached 600+ tabs. I might have touched thousands. Didn't count.

I tried One Tab. It seems to work for many people here but for me once in a while it lost all the tabs, which is not acceptable. See, the whole point of OneTab is to free my mind of all anxiety that I might lose a resource that I had discovered and at the same time, free the RAM.

So here is what I use now. This might or might not work for you.

* I use Zim Desktop Wiki to keep track of my important links. I use Zim-Clip extension to save links that I might need long term. I can use an hierarchical structure of any depth.

* I use a Session Manager "MySessions" to save work that I can open again when I come back to it. Typically I work on 4 different projects. Then there is mindless, bottomless browsing :) So each is a different session

* Lean Tab Limiter to control how many tabs are open at any one time

* "Open Tab Count Resurrected" to be give count of number of tabs in current window and total number of tabs across windows.

* Pocket to save links to read that I might not come back for reference

This is what I use to tame the multitabbed monster

Not sure if it solves OP problem, but personally I am using 42 Chrome user profiles. If You don't work with that yet, You then can switch the profile from chrome's toolbar and it opens new chrome instance with independent cookies, local-storage etc. So I have profile e.g. for RabbitMQ with about 20 tabs about things I found more persistently interesting. Like some documentation parts, stack-overflow questions etc. Everytime I am learning something new I have file with notes and then separate profile for this thing only. For the more not-so-organized things I have adhoc profile, which usually does not bother me to close all tabs in.

Honestly?

Close them. You aren’t going to read them anyway.

This.

Hold CTRL + W and free up your mental ram.

If I have many tabs open that I need to review and sift through and I want to put that process on hold, I use the OneTab extension that will collapse all the tabs and save all the urls as a group on the OneTab app page. You can name each group, click on a button to launch tabs for all the links in the group, etc.

Big picture though, for each project or endeavor I'm working on I create a folder in google drive with a document named journal where I journal my thoughts, ideas, meanderings on the project. I start collecting important links relevant to the project there. Over time I add more documents and folders to organize my work on the project and save/document any important resources.

I never have more than like ten tabs open. I have the urge to close them. I have no idea how anyone can keep that many tabs open or why.

Currently I have 468 Tab, I use firefox with few tab open and just restore previous session before quiting. In case of crash or accidental crash, I use firefox plugin Tab Session Manager, It has many good option.I export my open tabs once in every week to a folder.

Not a sustainable solution, but you might wanna download a session manager and periodically just save the current session and start with a fresh one. No loss of data, no perpetual accumulation of tabs.

Also use a service such as Firefox Pocket or Pinboard to boomark tabs which then can be instantly closed.

I started using the xTab extension which automatically closes all but a user-defined number of tabs (have it set to 20) and it hasn't bothered me. If there is a pin you don't want to close automatically (such as an online meeting) you can pin it so it doesn't close automatically.

firefox-centric: At the very least I recommend getting to know the control-pageup-pagedown commands.

Also use move to start and end quite a bit. I put basic stuff like email, calendar, at the start. social media next, then all my 100's of reseraches grow ot the right.

Also get familar with sliding them around into groups and saving them by date. And use control-B and control-H to get nimble with finding things.

Also get famliar with using folders in the toolbar. that helps me quickly open groups so I feel safer closing them all.

And don't be afraid to move a group of tabs to a new window if they have the same theme. Treat them like index cards and make use of their mobility.

one thing I really wish for would be a "switch to previously-viewed tab"

I bought a remarkable tablet (after using a kindle), and I use a reader view render (similar to push2kindle) and push anything i want to read later to it.

Everything else is fair game for getting closed without warning.

Once you realize that there is no difference between an open tab and having a link in history (or bookmarks if it is really interesting), it is easy - ctrl + Q and you are free.

I just mass close them once in a while. Often after I'm done solving a problem I end up with a hundred open tabs.

I am aggressive about deleting tabs but I use the browser history to go back if I need to.

One-tab extension.

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