How to manage too many browser tabs in Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi

Zoyx

I personnally use the extension url render. That permit me to search informations fastly without opening hundreds of tabs.
I takes down the problem at its core and my ram computer is happy.

ipico

I think you're onto something with the 2nd tab stack
also love the "save session" option though my current fav for this feature is a chrome ext called toby (gettoby.com)

i also like Opera's workspaces as someone else mentioned but it's limited to 5 which is not a bad thing but it's a limit

suggestion (unless there is already a setting for this):

make the 2nd tab stack swap width with the 1st tab stack
I'm manually setting the width of the 2nd stack then manually setting it back when I move out from it making it function like a "tab drawer"; it would be great if the width of the 2nd stack would expand just by clicking into it (not necessarily on a tab there) and contract the main tab column at the same time (a toggle more or less)

richardnpaul

Completely missed the panorama tab groups addon for Firefox, based on how the original panorama tab grouping worked from Firefox 4 onwards until it was removed this is currently still the best tab grouping approach that I've seen. You don't get distracted by tabs that you don't need to see at the time, it's easy to group tabs, label/categorise the groups, move tabs between groups, access the groups view, close whole groups of tabs and so on. Also performance is more than fine as tabs which are hidden are not loaded into RAM but when you switch between groups then all the tabs will be loaded (performance is fine here too but I do have lots of RAM, >=4 CPU cores and high speed internet connection.)
Take a look at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-groups/ and the image, specifically https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/user-media/previews/full/212/212439.png?modified=1545115863, to get a hint of how powerful and transformative tab grouping can be.

I use tab groups rather than bookmarks, mainly because the tabs have a thumbnail which makes finding a specific tab far quicker. As such I usually have over 100 tabs, and that's over two profiles, one for my work on my work equipment using my work email address and then my personal account.

I just came to say this because this article seems to be popular, and whilst I think that Mozilla are driving the browser into the ground the do still have some of the best addons out there which another browser by replicating and supporting as part of the browser could entice me away from Firefox. (Addons, where they are fully verifiable and open source are not too much of a problem; especially when you can fork them and build your own package - so that an update doesn't do a The Great Suspender on you).

mossman

@guigirl said in How to manage too many browser tabs in Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi:

@Priest72 said in How to manage too many browser tabs in Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi:

I only have 2-3 tabs maximum open as i am sure the majority of people do

Such a strange thing to say.

https://vivaldi.net/poll-how-many-opened-tabs/

Afaik 40% is rarely regarded as a majority.

It is, however, the statistical mode result of the poll...

mossman

@isnotvalid said in How to manage too many browser tabs in Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi:

Yes this might look unstructured to some of you, but even on my smartphone I tend to have 500 tabs open, in case I need to look back to something.

Would your use case not be helped by using separate windows for different searches, and saving such search clusters as sessions?

ralcaideal

@yevklim: I'm trying to guess why Opera is not in that "comparison"... oh, wait!

npro

@ralcaideal Go with hipster products not being valid and to be taken seriously as candidates.

proof:

spoiler

ralcaideal

@npro This is completely out of context and it's not a response, imo. I'm not talking about what is more or less hipster or about a tough man with a pink elephant. I am criticizing the fact that this "how to" is a marketing comparison that is not comparing against a real rival on the main topic, and Opera does, at least for some use cases (mine included), better tab management.

npro

@ralcaideal And I'm telling you that this product is no real rival because that product is designed for hipsters primarily, who will have 1-5 tabs opened at maximum, not for real people who do real office/work job.

ralcaideal

@npro Well, it looks like you prefer to criticise other products instead of being open-minded an being able to analyze objectively the things in order to improve the product you like. I can't consider this as a discussion so, yeah, you are right, if this makes you happy.

npro

@ralcaideal said in How to manage too many browser tabs in Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi:

I'm trying to guess why Opera is not in that "comparison"... oh, wait!

Well, it looks like you prefer to criticise other products instead of being open-minded an being able to analyze objectively. I can't consider this as a discussion so, yeah, you are right, if this makes you happy.

gimmemytabsback

Wow, really? Doesn’t everybody keep a lot of tabs open? Are my 40 tabs a lot of tabs?

glances at 71 open tabs in 1 of 3 windows
sweats

gimmemytabsback

@richardnpaul: ah, Panorama. My favorite part of Firefox, and the one feature that earned my eternal scorn of Mozilla when they burnt add-on developers in their FF57 overhaul and caused it to be deprecated.

richardnpaul

@gimmemytabsback I stayed on FF56 for a long time including moving over to a fork and only eventually going back to Firefox after Panorama Tab Groups was available and some other addons moved. I'm still deeply annoyed by their abject failure to make the session manager addon functionality a part of the browser or allow addons access to it (Vivaldi, another area where I could be won over) because I have lost data since moving back to FF without Session Manager (this is because I use tabs like bookmarks but I think that I should have bulletproof session management because data loss is the most serious type of bug).

gimmemytabsback

@richardnpaul What really pushed me over the edge was doing all you just mentioned while also putting addon developers in a terrible place. The main developer maintaining the most popular version of Panorama cited the whole mess as the reason he quit, and I decided if I was going to have to deal with a browser without panorama, I might as well switch to one with extensions that are not constantly breaking.

ruulrskybound

@npro: A bigger hipster calling hipsters hipster. If that isn't a bruh moment I don't know what is.

iAN CooG

@npro said in How to manage too many browser tabs in Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi:

product is designed for hipsters primarily, who will have 1-5 tabs opened at maximum, not for real people who do real office/work job.

WTF? Keep that "Hipster" for yourself, thank you.
I am one of those "real people" who does real office job and I don't have more than 1-5 tabs opened at a time, mainly because I can only look at one page at a time in any case, and then just because it's only confusing me keeping more, I prefer opening/closing tabs when needed.

I find it really ironical seeing a linux fanboy (which IS my definition of Hipster) call anyone else Hipster just because he doesn't fall into the tab hoarding trap.

npro

@iAN-CooG So with 1-5 tabs opened you feel that that hipster-social-media-multimedia orientated browser (I added some "all relative to the term" terms) does a better job at handling tabs? Seems that you aren't eligible for discussing tab handling either . Also no need to say anything more than "hipster" =/= "nerd computer geek" which is 99% of what Linuxers have been since 1991 lol.

iAN CooG

@npro I don't give a damn about any other browser than Vivaldi, I was just protesting about your silly association of someone that is not a tab hoarder hence it's hipster, and not really doing "real" office work, that's a plain and simple stupid thing to say. People have different habits and workflows, your way to handle your work doesn't mean everyone else is wrong.

npro

@iAN-CooG said in How to manage too many browser tabs in Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi:

@npro I don't give a damn about any other browser than Vivaldi

good stuff, I like what you are saying already

@iAN-CooG said in How to manage too many browser tabs in Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi:

someone that is not a tab hoarder hence it's hipster

I never said that, I said that a specific browser targeted to hipsters (not like Vivaldi which is becoming more of a complete office-suite) is hipster, not those who don't open more than 5 tabs, if you use 1-5 tabs in Vivaldi and the same in the hipster browser why would you choose to use the hipster browser if you weren't a hipster yourself in the first place? Not talking about you of course