Ways to avoid keeping so many browser tabs open

TidBITS Talk
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Just as I can’t stand too much clutter on my desk I can’t deal with a gazillion open tabs. I lose track of what is where and then I waste more time searching than I do thinking. Once I get “into the zone” I need to be able to access information quickly and without fuss. If I then have to root around first, I’ll choke off the process. Obviously, that’s just how I work. I know plenty of people who like “creative chaos”.

Safari has decent bookmark management supporting folder structure. Thanks to iCloud*, once a bookmark is set or revised, it’s updated everywhere (at least most of the time). Stuff I need frequently for a brief period goes at the end of my favorites bar. Stuff for longer-term repeat access goes into the folder structure I curate in my bookmarks. And URLs I want archived go into a .webloc files or Notes. I treat my browser window and tabs like my inbox: the only stuff in there is what I am working on right now or stuff I need to deal with later today. Stuff for tomorrow or next week goes into its own holding area, and everything else gets filed properly.

*) Long before iCloud bookmark syncing I relied on a script to translate my Netscape bookmarks to a simple html file which would then get uploaded to my personal web server. That way even when I was on some remote computer somewhere (hotel business centers, LOL, remember those?) I had access to stuff I needed. The final version of that html file still exists on my personal web server and occasionally I’ll still use it. In the meantime I’ve changed bits and pieces of it by hand. Mainly nostalgia. :wink:

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I am similar, but for this I’m a big fan of tab groups in Safari. Right now I have a groups of tabs with gift ideas for my wife; another groups researching replacement car audio receivers to add CarPlay to one of our cars (I’ve been collecting the cash back from my Apple Card to use for this - I’m almost there). I had one group I used last year to research our trip to the UK and Ireland, now closed, and a group that I have with research for a leak in my espresso machine, with suggested remedies and spare parts in case I need one. (Cleaning the three-way valve seems to be working.)

And the new profiles have allowed me to stay logged out of Google for most of my browsing and switch to a specific profile when I want to use my Google account, rather than open Chrome (on my Mac).

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I haven’t used new Safari tab groups, but I do have Arc setup on a machine with a newer OS, mainly for client work. That way I can have each clients passwords (banks, gmail etc) in one workspace.

Bookmarks - I always did have neatly organized bookmarks, but at some point my older version of Safari was struggling to bring things up when I was typing - I’d have to go open bookmarks and search for it. I think it was around that time I bought Devonthink.

Back to the tabs and researching, when I’m done with a project and close a tab (or more), to me it’s like throwing away that sticky note. It’s “complete”. I think I’d have a harder time bookmarking things and then going back and deleting everything when I’m done. It’s easier for me to just open tabs and then close them. For instance, the speaker thing. Having speakers that will pair in stereo is important to me. I recently discovered that was called TWS and it was easy for me to click on the open tabs, check them and close whichever ones didn’t have TWS, and then add a couple new ones.

Diane

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One of the advantages of Safari Tab Groups is that, unlike Bookmark folders, when you close a tab, it disappears from the group (and, when you open a new tab within a group, it stays)… I’m guessing that ARC works similarly. You could have a tab group for each project or client. If I were still working, I could see myself opening a browser window for the current project and also having another one open for general references. I would then add and delete tabs as necessary. When I wanted to switch to another project, I would switch tab groups; when I wanted to come back, I would reopen the appropriate tab group.

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FireFox hoses me when I get a crash, only restores 1 of ever so many "browser windows, which may not be the main one, e.g. search, print or a secondary window, and is rarely the one I needed.

Much vexation, not often , but not needed. Painful recovery any way I do it. Devon think may be my go to on this since Evernote is getting unstable.

I have the “go back and read” problem ,too. Those who don’t have it don’t understand those that do. I don’t think he realized it had some backhand to it.

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My first thought was “yes that’s me,” but then I realized that 95% of my work is done on my computer desktop, and I clean that much more often than I do the physical desktop (which is an old-fashioned metal desk that is behind me when I work on my computer).

I do a lot of research for my writing, and I find it useful to open new tabs when I am checking out something but don’t want to lose what I was working on before. I find it very useful to switch back and forth between two (or more) tabs to compare multiple sources. If I’m interrupted, it’s convenient to be able to go right back to what I was doing in another tab. I do check every so often how many tabs I have and whether they are important. Firefox handles up to about 20-30 tabs pretty well, but is known to either crash or slow down once I get too many tabs running.

A downside of having too many tabs open is that you can lose track of some of the things you were juggling with all those tabs. I haven’t found anything else that works any better. I don’t find bookmarks work very well.

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I keep lots of tabs open, in a largish number of windows (currently 23 windows). It’s a lot less painful than bookmarks, of which there are currently more than 15,000 just on my primary sierra mac. Sync is not an option I want, because I do different things on different computers/devices and I prefer to have some separation.

There are windows for mail, weather, the week’s news, projects, books to track down, online books that I’m reading off and on, rabbit holes, and the ever present ‘misc’.

They don’t intrude on the desktop (though other things do), because most of the windows are minimized. Some, like the book ‘list’ and the news window’s unread or keeper residue at the end of the week, get saved to dated bookmark folders when they hit ~50 tabs. Safari search for bookmarks is abysmal, so every now and again I export the bookmarks, which produces an html file that includes the page titles so I can search in bbedit or safari.

There are no tab groups in sierra safari. They do exist in catalina, but I just played a bit with them, and they’re fussier and afaict no more useful than just minimizing windows.

Once upon a time when the web was young I kept bookmarks organized, but it eventually became futile. The time and energy it takes to organize is better spent doing almost anything else.

Speculation: those of us who prefer living in a rich and varied environment (what neatniks call a mess), have many interests and possibly shortish attention spans. I can think of one counter example, but his interests have been serial, not parallel.

Remember, a mess is many excitingly satisfying selections.

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I’m in the no-way more than 3 tabs group. In fact, I almost never use more than one tab (well, except when I’m comparing two or more products).

The habit is a product of the early years of sparse RAM, code debugging, and ill-behaved applications I suppose. Yes, I usually close all applications before signing-off for the day. :flushed: :slight_smile:

And, er, normally there are only 4 icons on my desktop: 3 drives and one Recents folder.

Mind you, there are project folders with hundreds of files but if I’m not working on them I don’t want to see them. . . .

It’s so interesting how people think differently about such things.

Dave

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I’ve now removed the back-and-forth about this decision fatigue—I’m sure no offense was meant, and the Wikipedia page in question does include a section on criticism of the concept. Let’s stay focused on solutions to the too-many-tabs problem.

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34

And how to recover lost tabs from Time Machine?

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@schwartz see my solution earlier in the thread: Ways to avoid keeping so many browser tabs open - #10 by gingerbeardman

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I generally have zero tabs open when I go to bed and feel a little antsy if I have ten or so tabs open.

I do rely on Instapaper a lot; I use it speculatively, as in “that might be interesting to read,” not “I will definitely read that.” I use Pinboard for bookmarks of stuff that’s not reading per se (like a color calculator, for example), although there’s some speculation that the owner, Maciej Cegłowski, has lost interest in maintaining it.

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A post was split to a new topic: Alternatives to Pinboard

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I keep minimal tabs open in Safari on my iMac. I delete them all before I quit and restart Safari there.
On my iPhone, I tend to keep about a dozen tabs open, usually sites that I want to check regularly, i.e., a package delivery tracker.
The top of my desk is a mess, filed ‘geographically’ in piles that are always defying gravity. However, there’s organization even in that mess. Last week I needed a particular piece of paper, so I thought for a minute, then reached into my biggest pile, and put my hand on the desired single piece of paper almost instantly. (My father also piled papers ‘geographically’ (his term, actually). His study at home had about a dozen piles at any given time, and he could similarly find what he wanted remarkably quickly and efficiently. Filing cabinets were expensive back then, and he didn’t have funds for that kind of organization. (He was ‘closer to God’, and wasn’t paid accordingly.)

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I like the idea of things like Instapaper, but in reality, they’re the kiss of death for me. Anything I put in there will go unread forever.

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I would love to use Instapaper (and am testing out Omnivore) more, but there’re a few websites where this fails. Does anyone have any suggestions for “read-it-later” solutions for reading Reddit threads, for example?

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Another option for creating bookmarks for projects is to drag the URL address (from mac OS Safari) into a (Finder) folder to create a webloc file. Clicking this file opens Safari at the web page concerned. The file name is automatically created from the web page title. Here is an example that I created in a few seconds:

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image1242×554 45.6 KB

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I find a crash due to open tabs , when FF has opened more background browser copies (eg. with History), prevents restoration post crash.

Bookmarking ALL TABS is some help as insurance, but only some.

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At Adam’s suggestion and excellent review of Arc some months back, I downloaded and tested it. Ugh! I don’t know where anything is! How did I get here!?

So, I put it aside for a bit. Went back to Chrome, Safari, Firefox, DuckDuckGo as per usual depending on which website I was using. I soon realized that having 4 browsers open all the time! Something I had taken for granted was the only option I had. But goodness, 4 browsers, 4 times the memory. Oh, and which browser was good for which site again?

Ultimately, I decided to give Arc another chance. I have not looked back once. It is now my default browser. All those tabs are a thing of the past. I am happily getting my work done without memory crashes and everything is right where I put it.

I especially like the Spaces to separate my different selves and still keep it all in hand. I had tried the Safari profiles, but found it to be rudimentary. On Arc I have multiple profiles just a swipe away from the one I am working in. All in all, it is a fine piece of work. Every Thursday there are updates with visual explanations.

I do hope this company keeps on doing what they do: reinventing the inter webs. They are not making money yet, but I would gladly subscribe to keep my computing life simplified and elegant.

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44

Three ways I deal with remembering sites, besides bookmarks and tabs:

  • Regularly use multiple browsers. Right now I have Safari, Firefox, and Chrome open. This is mostly due to the availability of certain extensions and features on each browser.
  • Dragging URLs to the Finder window to create URL links. I do the same thing on Windows – it allows me to keep related sites in the same folder as what they’re for. I also create aliases to emails.
  • I’ve been using Read It Later (now Pocket) for 13 years

I save links I want to look at later to Pocket, then go through them at the end of the week. Some I keep in Pocket for a long time.

The advantage to Pocket is that it is cross-platform and cross-browser; I send links to it from both Windows and my Macs.

While I send links to Pocket from Safari (using Save to Pocket), I only read my Pocket links using Firefox. But not because Firefox now has Pocket built-in; I do not use that and have it turned off. Instead I use the far superior In My Pocket add-on, which is better integrated – it lets you toggle a site between saved or not by clicking an icon by the URL, and you can see and manage your Pocket list without ever going to the Pocket website.

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