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I pretty much always have >200 tabs open, and it sometimes gets up to more like 1000. (Currently I have about 100 windows open, some of them with dozens of tabs.)

Works fine in Safari, somewhat in Firefox, but Chrome chokes and falls to pieces.

The easy short-term fix to this problem is: stop using Chrome and switch to a different browser. The medium-term solution is to improve the way Chrome handles resources for heavy browsing workloads.

Running every webpage on a remote server is a ridiculous response.

All the browsers could still be better with these kinds of workloads though. Someone working on browsers should spend a few months or years considering how to suspend and cut off system resources to background tabs, make sure no browser tasks are accidentally quadratic in number of tabs or windows, etc.

Why is running every webpage on a remote server a ridiculous response? I don't really care what the software is doing as long as (/if) it solves my problem. I agree switching to a different browser is the easy short term fix, but that might not work for some people. The medium-term solution is not really a response because that's completely out of your control.

I mean the medium-term response from someone who wants to make it their full-time work project to solve this problem for everyone. For someone who doesn’t have the political clout to change Chrome directly, a plugin or fork could probably also be made to solve the problem.

Personally what I’d like to see in a browser is a more explicit and configurable policy about how many resources to devote to background tabs.

The remote-execution solution is incredibly bandwidth-heavy, costs money, hands all browsing data over to a third party, creates an unnecessary dependency on a startup company that might fail or get bought at any time, and takes a ton of control out of end-users’ hands.

I highly doubt a plugin would work, but maybe a fork could work. It does seem like Mighty is collaborating with the Chrome team to make improvements to Chrome directly: https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/1385237770633846784

>creates an unnecessary dependency on a startup company that might fail or get bought at any time

This is the story of any new company trying to build anything

How many of those 200+ tabs are you actually tracking versus a bunch of windows you blindly close out later because they didn't actually matter? What is the upper limit on productivity? Being able to keep 500 tabs open at the same time? Also, there are 100% existing systems to keep track of sites you genuinely need to follow-up on that have already solved "a real problem."

If this was at a, say, $5 price point, I don't think there'd be that many people putting up a stink.

I personally don't have 200+ tabs, so I can't speak to this problem, but I don't think you are going to make much inroads telling people to change how they work. So rather focusing on hypotheticals, I'm glad that Mighty provides a solution that doesn't require much friction or behavior change.

Why is $5 an acceptable price? Why not $10, $50, $500?

Edit: You agree that having 200+ tabs is a problem right? Why haven't the people with 200+ tabs adopted the solutions you speak of? Perhaps those solutions aren't good enough, or perhaps they don't want to change the way they work. Either way, if those solutions really "solved" the problem, we wouldn't be observing people with 200+ tabs in the world.

You must be working with idiots, because my coworkers can follow even more complicated orders than "close your unneeded tabs or your computer will be slow."

Sure, you can choose to insult them. Meanwhile Mighty is building a solution for them.

I dont think they are real. Btw. I have 170 tabs open right now and I really need like 5 of them, but firefox uses 2 gigs of ram so it doesnt matter.

There's the issue precisely. Thanks.

Because spending $500 dollars a month versus having the control to close a tab you don't really need to track is inane. Would you pay that recurring fee out of your own pocket to improve your own productivity? That doesn't seem like a reasonable proposition to me.

For at least a decade of my life, I was a 200+ tab person. Paying any amount of money to make my computer slightly more responsive versus the time I lost just clicking through (literally) hundreds of tabs to find something versus logging it--let alone simply searching for the same thing again and hitting the links that float to the top because I've visited them--doesn't make any sense to me.

As I see it, the "problem" here is not that you need to have 200+ tabs open at any given time. The problem is precisely that you have 200+ tabs open at any given time.

If you have the ability to keep track of 200+ tabs, exactly where they're located on your screen, and can switch back and forth between those and your actual work within a matter of seconds then kudos to you. You're actually a genius, and your employer should definitely consider purchasing this ongoing subscription for you.

[edit]: Just looked at your history and realized I'm probably replying to an astroturf account, so joke's on me, I guess.

Nah, not an astroturf account. Just a YC founder who thinks this HN response is crazy.

I'm not 100% against this being an astroturf campaign, but there's literally never been a single idea the past 6-7 years you've felt this strongly to post about, ad nauseam, until this exact thing?

200+ tabs open for $30+ a month per employee is the hill you decided to take a stand on?

We could also continue to talk about the points we both raised earlier, or that could all get lost in the weeds :)

Everyone has to start somewhere :)

This made me laugh, thanks. Take care :)

I have ~300-400 tabs open pretty much all the time, using The Mighty Suspender in Chrome. Works great, don't really have any desire to stream my browser from a remote server.

I'm mostly CPU limited actually, not RAM limited, RAM usage usually never goes over ~12GB out of 32GB available.

Past the ~450 tab mark CPU usage will skyrocket with even a single video call open however.

My problem isn't necessarily that this isn't a good product in the sense that it solves a problem people have in a profitable way, but rather that this problem exists in the first place and the trends technology is taking to solve it.

> I've met people who had 200+ tabs in their browser, using 10 GB+ of memory on Chrome. Good luck telling them to use a thin client/buy a faster computer/change their workflow.

I don't know what point you're making here, would this person also be more likely to pay for this service? or less likely to purchase more ram/a better computer so be more easily convinced to pay for this service?

The point is, these comments are not unique or valuable insights. I'm sure users already know they can buy a better computer or more RAM, so why haven't they upgraded? How will the comments on HN change their behavior? Something must be stopping them from doing those things. Maybe Mighty is the solution that will get the job done. Suhail is the only one providing a new solution while everyone else is saying the status quo is good enough even though clearly some people out there still have a problem.

no one is stopping you to pay for this superior alternative to 'clunkier' offerings. but to say he came up with the 'solution' is disingenuous.

I'm seeing people saying 'this is amazing. I will pay for this' without even having tried it or any alternatives. I don't know about you but doesn't seem natural.

I am one of these people, and what I have to do is once every couple of quarters go through my open windows and tabs and edit them down by going through them and deciding to (a) read them and close them (b) close them without reading, or (c) drag the tab into a window to save it for later.

A real solution: emacs buffer management style for my tabs please? Maybe web pages that don't need a gig of ram for a tab or two? Please?