Excessive Browser Tabs

Cluster centers on debates about users keeping hundreds or thousands of browser tabs open for research, projects, and workflows, versus recommendations to use bookmarks, extensions, or better organization.

📉 Falling 0.4x Other
3,812
Comments
19
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#5894
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2008
15
2009
58
2010
113
2011
122
2012
101
2013
157
2014
138
2015
132
2016
152
2017
352
2018
169
2019
188
2020
347
2021
486
2022
302
2023
429
2024
268
2025
231
2026
52

Keywords

FFS AFAIK TST e.g OP HN pinboard.in AnkiTab google.co OS tabs tabs open open tab bookmarks bookmark project browser 20 session

Sample Comments

devcriollo Jan 28, 2021 View on HN

why do you have so many tabs open? if i need to see something then i save it to bookmarks or session buddy. How long will it take you to see the content of that amount of tabs if you are ever going to do it?

badrabbit Aug 2, 2022 View on HN

I regularly have 300-500 tabs open on multiple browsers at the same time. This freaks out many people when I share my screen. Works wonders for me, no tree style or additional plugins other than to change user agents or tamper with js (tampermonkey). AMA lol.Tabs are like part of workloads I am actively working on. They are not a set of stores items to organize or clean up. I very rarely bookmark or use bookmarks. I research and investigate many things, the results of any one of them could be

peanut_worm Jan 20, 2021 View on HN

Why do people keep 100s of tabs open at a time? I get irritated if I have more than 8 open.

deafpolygon Nov 15, 2022 View on HN

People with over 100 tabs open.. how? Why?

JasonFruit Feb 13, 2014 View on HN

I don't understand why anyone would have that many tabs open. It's the internet, man — bookmark it and go back if you need to.

weaksauce Jan 1, 2021 View on HN

I am like your friend... basically tabs are a "working memory" that you don't want to store permanently in bookmarks. each window or sets of windows is typically a different topic that is being research on with a bunch of middle clicks to open tabs. I have so many open that I wrote a small webext for it that shows a page of all your tabs that you can click on to navigate to that tab with a click. just a nicer interface to see all the windows open and all the tabs. <a href="https:&

lacoolj Jan 6, 2023 View on HN

i have over 500 tabs open in my two browsers (700 if i open my other profile)bookmarks just dont cut it these days

mavhc Aug 1, 2022 View on HN

I have 1000 tabs open over various computers, not sure it's a good thing though, 10% I need, 20% I forgot to close, and 70% I'm totally going to get around to reading one day

financetechbro Mar 5, 2025 View on HN

How do you manage 147 open tabs and why have them all open at once?

reportgunner Feb 28, 2023 View on HN

If you can't remember all of those 500 tabs, did you really need them ?