I just saw a coworker with something like 30 tabs open in Chrome. I also know someone who regularly hits the 500-tab limit on their phone, though I suspect that’s more about being messy than anything else.
When I’m researching something, I might have 10-50 tabs open for a while, but once I’m done, I close them all. If I need them again, browser history is there.
Why do people keep so many tabs open? Is there a workflow or habit I’m missing? Do they just never clean up, or is there a real benefit to tab hoarding? I’m genuinely curious. Why do people do that?
I view my tabs as very transient, but I’ve learned that many people consider them much more permanent than that. Some even compare them to the files on your computer, which is mind blowing to me.
However, everything that is out of sight and out of mind will pile up. For example, various work related files, like documents and spreadsheets tend to accumulate over the years. Most of them are just there waiting for that one day when I might need them. If someone secretly deleted 50% of my files, it might take years before I would notice.
But that’s an interesting point about tabs. If you can’t see them, they will pile up. Totally agree with that. However, many people still prefer to keep sites as tabs rather than bookmarks specifically because they can see them all the time.