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?


For me it’s because I have ADHD and thrive among organized clutter.
I may have 100 tabs open, but they’re all categorized: One tab group for YouTube, one for porn, one for my website, and one for everything else. I keep stuff in there that’s good enough to hang onto for a while, but not good enough to bookmark.
Your way to manage you tabs is really close to managing bookmarks. It takes time and effort. And categorzing them goes against clutter ! What is your criteria to move a webpage to a bookmark ? I use bookmadks in the toolbar, so they are all accessible and well organized. They are not tab, just a list of pages in different folders (folder = tab group)
The criteria is whatever I feel like at the moment if/when I ultimately decide to bookmark. There is no hard set rule, because again, I have ADHD.
What do you use bookmarks for then? How important and permanent does it have to be to earn a dedicated bookmark?