How many tabs do you have open?

Zero. I think I’m the odd one out here. I have a habit of closing all tabs once I’m done, always have.
- I dig it, start fresh each time.
- Exactly. I cannot comprehend people with dozens of windows with thousands of them. How do you find literally anything at that point?
  I usually close all, sometimes if I start a long video I'll keep it open and paused until I come back to watch more of it. But that's just one, and just because that site won't remember where I left off, and I don't want to memorize what the timestamp is. I will have to refresh the page to get it to resume loading the video, but I can remember the timestamp for the 2 seconds it takes to reload and click back to it. But I'll forget if I have to come back hours later.
  
  On linux, with kde, there is usually a browser extension preinstalled called plasma integration.
  It makes it so that when you search from the KDE equivalent of window's start menu, you can also search open browser tabs or history.
  I close all tabs once I'm done, but when trying to solve a programming/devops related problem, having lots of tabs open lets me see more than one approach to a problem, along with opinions, side by side.
  And research in general requires a lot of tabs, in my experience.
  
  How do you find literally anything at that point?
  I got so used to the Safari tab system that I decided to replicate it in Firefox (recently switched).
  For me Three Styles Tabs and Simple Tabs Groups have helped me enormously to keep track of all of my tabs, additionally, I think you can search your tabs within the search section.
  As almost all crap I have, I keep categories/groups of it:
  Random searches
  NAS related stuff
  Mac related stuff etc.
- Judging by a lot of the replies and other discussions I’ve seen, no it’s not the norm.
- So how did you type this comment?
  
  I’m using an iPhone app. Nothing to do with a web browser or tabs.

my firefox app gave up counting and just shows an infinity symbol :(
- That's all I ever see on my wife's phone in Chrome. Just a smiley face. Personally it bugs the shit out of me. I close any unwanted tabs.
  
  hey I saw that as well on my wife’s chrome on phone, it’s really scary
  
  phone in Chrome
  I was so confused when I saw that face in my parents phones, I thought it was some kind of easter egg, well, maybe it actually is.
- That's.. kinda scary. How much RAM do you have?
  
  Doesn't matter that much if they're unloaded.

5k tabs

At 1k tabs firefox was snappy and responsive, but at 5k tabs it was bad, very unstable, buggy and sluggish.
Firefox would crash often even doing simple tasks, some times it took 2 or 3 tries to open firefox. scrolling through all the tabs a couple of minutes.
But all good things must come to an end. Now I close any extra tabs, have 5 - 30 tabs open.
- Who are you so wise in the ways of tabs?
- I am in awe.
- Legitimate question - just how do you accumulate 5K tabs? Did you just never close any tabs, like ever?
  
  Something like that. At first I opened tabs for ”This sounds interesting I will read / watch it later” or ”I'll probably need it later” This got me to ~300 - 800 tabs but then it became a joke, I just left tabs open knowing full well where not needed. Some times keeping all tabs open payed off like, using the search feature to find back to a project I left off. This happened very rarely.

Fun fact: if you open more than 100 tabs in chrome (at least on android), it no longer shows the number of open tabs, it just says ":D".
If it's incognito tabs, it says ";)".
I haven't seen a number in years. This means I'd have to count manually which I'm not going to do. Hope this answers your question sufficiently.
- On Firefox it's an infinity symbol.
- 100 incognito tabs
  You're picky indeed, my friend.
- I didn't know about that feature. Kinda snarky of the devs if you ask me. Good luck with your tabs!

I think this is a generational question. I'm anal about tabs being left open like a light in the house being on
- Which generation leaves them open/closed?
  I haven't noticed a pattern, but I also haven't really explored
  
  Both of my parents are/were notorious for leaving roughly 655489357 tabs open at a time. I get stressed if I have more than a couple at a time. We're boomers/a millennial, respectively. But it could also be a result of my severe anxiety. Who knows?
- My ex and I were the same age and totally different on this. I open tabs, close them, don’t leave any open long term. She’d have Safari open with dozens or hundreds as far as I could tell. But I operate like an older millennial and she has the sensibilities of a boomer - TV on 18 hours a day, etc
  
  TV on 18 hours a day, etc
  Damn, this frames boomer mentality perfectly.
- If I'm not actively using a tab, I'll close it, unless I'm working on a longer term project. Right now I'm planning a fairly long trip to South America, so I've had several travel sites up for multiple weeks.
  Edit: am X/millennial cusp.

You should get vertical tabs on your browser. Tree style tab for Firefox is pretty good.
- I prefer Sidebery, but vertical tabs of any sort are the way to go. Plus userChrome.css to nuke the top tab bar.
  
  Sidebery is the best
- Thank you for the suggestion!

100's. It's easy when using a tool like tree tabs.
I have several different ongoing projects with different avenues of research and I use it like a temporary store until I organise and store them.
- I should go back to tree tabs. On my old laptop I got firefox properly messed up and got rid of a lot of addons.

- Do you use bookmarks? Or just let the browser remember the url to autocomplete?
  
  Bookmarks

4
if tab not relevant to task then am close
- What happens when you have more than 4 relevant tabs 🙃
  
  am only close irrelevant ones

How do people manage to have more than 6 tabs open? What is this talk about 500-1000+?
- I do when researching buying a product, having different tabs open comparing different models, with each their different stores and a bunch of reviews. You can easily get more than 20.
  Same with researching a science topic.
  But after being done, those tabs get closed. I rather start with a fresh browser each time.
- Tabs I want to get back to later but never do is why I'm in the 1000+ camp
- As soon as I can't see letters anymore I just burn it all down and start with a fresh window
  
  burn it all down
  People with Burn my windows GNOME extension:
- We have something wrong with us, that's all.

Had 300 on my laptop a while ago, finished up a project which let me drop it down to 160.
On my desktop I have 1,300 or so. Both of them on a single Firefox window with Sidebery
- Have you used TreeStyleTab? I'm wondering how it compares with Sidebery
  
  I started with TST actually! I can't remember the exact reasons but I thiiink I switched over to Sidebery for better/faster session restores
- Wow and I thought I had a lot. I salute you.
- That's a heck of a lot of tabs there. Good luck with them!
- Finally someone who had a decent amount! Last time I checked I had 1100!
- But why?
  And how many of those can be closed?
  
  Cuz I use them as a way to keep tabs (heh) on different projects I'm involved in. Tree tabs are much faster for me to organize into folders compared to bookmarks since they're already part of my flow of using tabs in the first place :)
  That being said, I end up using them more as a way to search through pages I had opened before, using the URL bar. Browser history is a little more finicky to search in that regard
  As for how many I can close, I tend to close tabs once I'm done with something in a project (though some tabs I keep around if i find them to be useful beyond that specific project). I also have a bunch of tabs open for music and videos that I want to share with my friends when they get time which could be closed once I share them

136
Most are unloaded. Using Firefox and sidebery on Linux with 32GB of RAM.
- Very similar 153 tabs currently, had to check with Tab Session Manager for the count. Linux with 32Gb Ram. Firefox gets restarted maybe every 2-4 weeks. Occasionally I kill a tab that takes more then 1Gb of memory.
  
  I use Tab Counter Plus and put the number at the top of the sidebery sidebar.
- My mindset is, I paid for 64GB of RAM, I'm gonna use all of it
- I dig it. Thanks for the details!

Seeing that many tabs gives me actual anxiety.
- I don't need to know which is which, they're more or less sorted by recency. So I go through the most recent tabs and get the info I need or do the task associated, then close them, until I get back to the previous task or subject.
  Sometimes I get interrupted with a new thing to look up or do, and more tabs get made and the cycle begins anew, regardless of how many already exist.
  Some projects last days or weeks, and tabs related to them end up being longer-lived. If I get on one of those tabs and don't want to work on the project right then, I'll continue going back (leftwards) til I find something I can do or read in the time I have available. So I definitely have tabs that have been open for months but I do need to get to eventually.
  Also, sometimes when I need to look at something I know I have (or had) open in a tab, I'll just search for it (literally, i.e. Google) again in a new tab and handle it there. Then if I do come across the old tab, it gets closed quickly.
  I'm "done" when I'm back at my inbox or calendar (first or 2nd tabs, pinned). This rarely happens and when it does I'm sure there is a something in my email or a new ticket in JIRA for me to start on...
  So overall it's not about knowing what's in each tab, but having a system to navigate them that works for you.
- Me too :( Since about 2017 I've been telling myself I'll get around to cleaning them.

Zero. Maybe it's the OCD, but I never ever leave open a tab I'm not actively using, even if it means I open and close the same few tabs every five minutes for 8 hours every day.
Yeah, probably the ocd lmao.

I just closed 47. All of them Amazon...
My best friend is having a babby...
Xmas...
Starting a small business and tools are needed...
I just moved to south Florida, and the bugs are the size of house cats, so I require a salt shotgun...
SO. MANY. HOLIDAY. DEALS.
Like I've never been a shopping addict, but I had a budget of about $1000 for all of that, and I blew through it QUICK.
I could see how it could be addictive, but I do know when to walk away.
- the bugs are the size of house cats
  Lmao, I feel that in my soul
  When I first moved to south Louisiana, I encountered a giant (black and orange) grasshopper. My first thoughts were along the lines of, "Wtf kind of grasshopper is that!? Did I move to fucking Jurassic Park or something!? Fuck!"
  It was very jarring to see insects so big (milipedes that excrete some kinda fluid when touched, ground spiders, thunker af orb weavers, wood roaches flying)... now that I actually type it out, it still seems like Jurassic Park almost 20 years later lol; but I'm not much bothered anymore by most of them.
  But the electrified tennis racquet for killing mosquitos... that shit is priceless. Wish I could find the $5 walmart ones still, because I would dual wield them and have extra for guests. I've gone from mosquito prey to predator, and it's a joy

This one. I used to have a bunch of tabs pinned but having to restore them frequently just became a hassle, so I added them to my bookmarks.
- When I start up, I right click on a folder and "open all in new tabs"
  Then shift click to pin them again. Makes it easier to restart when I need to
  
  I think you can middle-click the folder.
- I need to do that. I hate when pinned tabs crash or get messed up.

The way people use tabs is bizarre to me. My ex would have so many open that it was really difficult to navigate between them. Seems like a better idea to use features like bookmarks or reading list.
- It depends on what you are doing.
  I do programming and I need access to project management sites, communication sites, documetations (language and library) and tools sites opened.
  When I am researching the topics I am not very familiar I usually read 4 or 5 sources. So in the middle of developing a feature I have at least tens of tabs.
  When it combined with home lab servers, entainments, side readings and related readings I usually tends to end up with hundreds.
  
  I used to have 20-30 open at a time when I was doing the same things, but I can't imagine building up to hundreds. Maybe I'd leave them open for the next day, but generally I try to stay more organized than that. When you have hundreds of tabs open you can't even see the titles so I find it a lot more difficult to navigate between them.
- Or just open multiple windows if you have multiple projects open.
- I agree. I think it's more of an organizational deficiency for me.

More than I can count thats for sure.

Zero. Not using a browser right now but I usually only have 1-2. Anything more than 6 tabs open and I start getting turned around.
- That sounds like a healthy approach to web browsing. I dig it.

I had over 2000 in Firefox. That's when I decided to clear them...
- All those tabs... Lost to time...

∞

A few hundred. At the end of a “project/idea/thing” I’ll bookmark the entire set, dated, described, and close them all at once, things always come back in need later. It’s very satisfying.
For normal day to day browsing I have a window with about 15 pinned tabs that I just cycle through in the morning catching up on stuff and then close that window.

Bare minimum is 7 cus they are pinned. These are tabs I reference constantly. 2 for monitoring servers, 2 for emails, 2 for chat, 1 for lofi girl.
After that it's just based on the current project. So anywhere from 1 for browsing to 20 while doing research.
Add another 7 if you include my work computer for the various sites I work out of.
I try to close anything not currently used quite often and just store things in bookmarks.

After closing a dozen left over from looking up various topics over the last few days, 164 tabs, some of which are probably 5 years old. I swear I'll look at them someday!
- You're entering the danger zone of tab hoarding there..

At current count, 911. I used to sit around 3000 but managed to shave it down, now it's creeping back up.
Too many things I want to download or read later and not as much time as I used to have. I have been making an effort to use alternative methods though such as bookmarks, YouTube playlists, or just, you know, doing the thing in the moment.

69 (okay actually it was 67 but I opened a few more to make it the funny number)

1.
I mean I love tabs, use em all the time. But currently my computer has just 1 open.
I don't use em as bookmarks to get back to. People seem to just hoard them. And for no reason.
You can't tell me there's a good reason to keep hundreds open. It's just laziness at that point.
- You're correct. I don't pretend that more than a dozen of mine are actively used anymore.

I use a browser extension that closes the least recently used tab after 15 minutes. It stops closing when it reaches five for the current window.
I don't think I'm missing anything.
- That sounds cool! Do you have the name?
  
  Tab Wrangler

It fluctuates as I'm researching a topic to me snapping out of it and realizing "damn that's a lot of tabs" and closing pretty much all of them.
So it usually goes from around 30 or something, down to 3 or 5 and it repeats.
On my phone I do actually have 1,500 since my browser opens another one everytime I use search on the home screen

24 on my mobile browser. Not too bad, really.

Zero across my phone and desktop at the moment. Having more than around 5 tabs open at once does not sit well with me.

Usually not more then 30 before I close most of them with "Close all tabs to the right".
I have browsing history so don't need tabs.
- Agreed. My rule of thumb is: if it takes enough more than a second to figure out why I had the tab open, then I might as well just close it and re-open it if the need to have it available reemerges. It takes a lot of effort (several seconds and a lot of mental energy) to create the mental context that I need to make use of the tab. On the other hand, opening it takes a few seconds and requires little to no thought whatsoever.
  So I just close them. In fact, having too many tabs open just makes it take longer to find the open tabs that I'm actually currently using.

8 windows, ~17 tabs.
- That's a pretty good mix.
  
  Basically just an evolution of the same way I used my desktop 20 years ago. Always had this concept of an Internet-connected computer as a dynamic newspaper, windows were individual columns arranged around the page/screen. Used to be a bunch of IRC windows along the bottom of my screen, maybe a couple of MSN windows up the side, and one or two browser windows (substitute one browser window with an email client or RSS reader) taking up the rest of the screen.
  Well now everything is javascript. Google had the same idea with Google Wave a few years later, they abandoned it, but the javascript future happened anyway. Bunch of tiny browser windows along the bottom of the screen for discord, two large ones across the top for everything else (webmail, content aggregators like lemmy have largely replaced RSS), and a couple more on a second monitor.

Right now? 2. Generally? under 10.
- I envy that, it certainly sounds like the proper amount.

Usually one, maximum 10.
- I admire your self control!
  
  Look, it's not self control. Too many tabs just scare me.
- I'm the same. Too many tabs confuses me and I start clicking around forgetting what I was doing. Keep it to a minimum.

Zero. I don't have a browser open, just a phone app.
- I'm still counting that as one. What app do you use and how do you like it?
  
  Boost. I used Boost for Reddit, so this app for Lemmy feels very familiar.
  I like how few taps it takes to switch accounts. I like how I can set my default feed and sort and it sticks where some other lemmy apps I tried frequently reset to a trending feed, gross.
  I like the feature that allows me to apply a custom tag to users that only I can see. I use it to keep an eye on potential trolls. If I have a person tagged as "MAGA troll", I know not to engage with them but to grab the popcorn and enjoy the ride.

5-6 per open project at work and other work, so, about a thousand.
Really about 50-80 in 20 windows because I've only just learned of tab groups.

10 max per window: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dustman/
And no duplicate tabs on a window: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duplicate-tabs-closer/
- Thank you for the links!

Usually about 10-30. It depends. I have a minimum of 6010 tabs open for stuff I check several times a day, like mail, news feeds, and such. Then I have a few working projects, like Google docs. Then some "temporary tabs" that expand from 10 to 30, as a reminder of tasks I have to complete or get back to someone on, only to shrink them down later in the day.

None. I bookmark stuff if I need to come back.
- I envy your discipline.
  
  Yeah but my bookmarks likely massively outweigh your tabs haha

No more than around 10, I actively try to keep the number of tabs I have in check. Sometimes I quit the browser and reopen tabs again as a way clear my head.
- The zen method. I dig it.

one

I organize my tabs by topic window (small project, chunk of work for a larger project, related idea) then kick them into onetab as a bundle with a short description when I'm done with whatever it is I needed them for.
I typically have 5-30 tabs open in topic windows at any time but I can open onetab and ctrl-f to find anything I've saved over the last 7 or 8 years. There must be 5000 tabs in there at this point.
- You are the tab master. Thank you for describing your workflow!

probably around 300, split into 2 windows, one "main" and one that's effectively my YouTube to watch list
- Why not add them to the watch later list?
  
  unless they've changed it, removing videos from the list I don't want to watch always felt like a hassle, closing tabs is easier and has an easy "undo" function
- That's pretty interesting, I find myself doing that with 3-5 youtube videos at a time. I'll watch maybe two and eventually close the window and lose the others.

Eight.

Six.
- That's a good number!

7 at most

mostly less than five.
but if I'm programming it's around 50-70

Never more than ten. Currently, seven.

Typically 1~10. Four right now (all four are Lemmy: inbox, another thread, front page, this thread)
I close them as the tabs bar feels cluttered and/or I see no reason to keep them open.

As someone who is anal about closing tabs, the answers in this thread hurt my soul.
Genuine question, why so many tabs? What are you using them all for??
- I'm not too happy about them either. To some extent I think I avoid organizing them because leaving them as tabs makes them more "pressing" for me to some day get to reading. I'm like a failed data hoarder/archivist.

16, counting this one that I'm about to close.

On my phone I have 4 tabs but on my laptop I have 4 windows open each having 10 tabs open