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'm not going to finish Factorio in a week, and my collection of tabs on factorioLab, sheets, drawio, and the wiki are both interrelated and mark the several projects I have going. That's also a topic that would be very annoying to reopen every week, and also would lead to bookmark clutter as most of those tabs will get closed when the projects are finished.
There's also research tabs for things that will come up later. I have 6 open right now for configuring a smart home system that won't get opened until I can actually see the system in person, but I don't know when that will happen.
And there's also long running series, like text stories, podcasts, or youtube series. That would be a nightmare to update bookmarks for, but those tabs will track progress just fine.
I suppose I keep tabs exactly because I want to keep interest for weeks, but I know I'll forget all the details between sessions.