Show HN: Snap those tabs – a simple extension for tab hoarders
chrome.google.com
chrome.google.com
A few months ago I created an extremely simple browser extension. My goal was just to have fun discovering the process of creating and publishing an extension (main lesson learned: getting an extension approved can take a lot more time than developing it).
I wrote an aggressive description but ended up not sharing it because I felt like it might be too silly or only useful to me.
However last week I read the very long discussion that followed Andrei Surugiu’s post "My bad habit of hoarding information" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34272834) and realized that many others could actually also benefit from this extension.
It will be useful to you if:
- you tend to hoard tabs and think it’s a problem for whatever reason (cognitive burden, slower computer, etc)
- you’re not interested in saving/organizing/curating tabs that you will never read anyway
- your willingness to close all tabs is fragile and you must act quickly before you change your mind
Some feel like they’ve achieved some work when they have read and closed a portion of their many opens tabs. I’m not judging. I also feel good when I’ve "processed" (read) my emails even though the majority of them are newsletters. Have I really achieved something though?
I cherry-picked a few comments from the discussion:
"I usually have max 100 open, but I reboot all the time (for power mgmt reasons) and use OneTab so that seems to solve my hoarding tendencies. That and keeping searchable local notes / using history / bookmarking the really good ones that I'll also never read."
"Having OneTab makes me feel like it's ok to close the tabs, knowing full well I'll never, ever look for most of them again…"
"But, still, this is a race you can never win. As you digest more information, you consume more."
"I spend a huge amount of time collecting a never-ending stream of links, notes, and thoughts, only to never actually go back and read them again."
"If OP is anything like me, they 'manage' the old tabs by thinking "Oh that's neat I'll leave it open so I can come back to it' and...never do that."
"700 open tabs... Try 7000.... I have tabs all the way back from 2014 open right now on one of my firefox instances (probably have ~15 Firefox windows open across devices rn) which I have migrated between multiple machines along with my user profile, and I'm telling you I'm gonna get to them any day now."
"People have hundreds of tabs open at the same time?? I get anxiety if it goes above 12 or 15... The times when I just close them all and start opening firefox with no previous tabs are so relieving to me."
"I have a Python script which I can use to kill all chrome.exe so that next time the machine boots, chrome offers me to restore the tabs which where open before the crash."
"I have a real bad case of digital tsundoku. Even as I type this, I have roughly 80 links from HN opened, two dozen or so Twitter tabs, probably 30 YouTube tabs, and then a healthy heap of other miscellaneous sites. I know I will never get through this infinite backlog. Even if I were to squirrel myself away and do nothing but open each tab, digest its contents, and move on to the next, it would probably take me years. And I would be so burnt out I wouldn't be digesting well enough. Plus, most of that information is probably, at least slightly, outdated.
...Oh well, time to open up another dozen 3-hour long YouTube "mini" docs about niche subjects I have no engagement in."
"I've made a huge dent in my open tabs so far and I'm fairly happy with my progress in the past week."
"Delete all the tabs now and watch the world continue."