Web Browser Tab Management

Nov 29, 2024

Issue #199

The holiday season is a great time of the year to focus on organization, systems, reviews and planning, especially since most people have some free time.

One of the keys to success is being organized. But one of the biggest problems of living in the Information Age is that information comes at you so quickly from a variety of different modes that if you don't manage its flow well, you'll become overwhelmed. Most people are simply trying to keep their head above the deluge, because they can't filter, prioritize, organize, schedule, process to completion and archive the bits of information that come at them. Being able to master this flow is a strategic advantage that usually results in outsized success.

One of the most common sources of information today is the Internet. You can access webpages about literally anything, though most people are so busy, distracted and/or lacking in focus that they usually don't have time to finish reading the page or save it for later. Without periodic maintenance, over time this results in having hundreds of web browser tabs open, perhaps across several different browser windows.

This creates existential overhead and reduces the performance of your computer. It's like having a cluttered, disorganized desk. It takes time and energy to find what you're looking for, leaving less resources to actually do your work. And the more tabs you have open, the less reluctant you are to add more. That's because when you already have hundreds of tabs open, one more is not much of a difference.

So you need to zoom out and think strategically about how you use your web browser and manage all of the tabs you open. Think of it like a desktop on which you work on a variety of tasks and projects during different times of the day and on different days. Yes, you could make this desk as big as you want, but doing so makes it increasingly distracting and difficult to find and retrieve what you're looking for.

What if you could keep all of your browser tabs organized in workspaces, categories and groups based on the task or project you wanted to work on at any given time, with all of your other open tabs hidden away in a drawer (but still readily accessible)? Well now you can.

After several days of researching web browser tab management extensions (for Google Chrome, including Brave, which is based on Chrome), including Workona and Tablerone, I decided to try tabExtend (which offers a free, limited trial).

I should note at this point that my inability to effectively manage my browser tabs was one of the greatest current pain points in my life. When I started the trial, I had 823 open browser tabs across two browser windows. I know this because I had been conscientious enough to install the Tab Count extension, which is customizable and does a great job. And I had that many open tabs even though I was diligent about trying to close them. It's easy to open a browser tab but it takes more time and effort to process the page and then close the tab. One of my biggest problems is when I have time to scan the headlines on ZeroHedge but don't have time to read the handful of articles I see that look interesting, which results in a handful more open tabs.

At any rate, after reading much of tabExtend's user guide and playing around with it, I quickly realized that it was a powerful tool that would allow me to quickly organize my browser tabs and keep them that way. I should warn you that if you try the free trial, make sure you can return your browser tabs (you can organize only up to 40 during the trial) to the way they were before or you could lose them like I apparently did.

tabExtend allows you to import and organize your browser tabs into folders and subfolders (which tabExtend calls workspaces, categories and groups) on your desktop (in a manner that allows you to use a kanban workflow if you want), though this is the only article I could find about how you should structure this or an organizational philosophy you should use. You can create a name for each one and choose an icon for it. You can drag and drop tabs, groups and categories or use a menu to move them. You can move workspaces up and down. You can sort each group of tabs either manually (drag and drop), alphabetically or by date added, and you can create stacks of tabs within a group.

For each browser tab, you can create a note, a To Do item, a reminder, change its color or pin it.

You can open all of the tabs in a group at once by clicking Open All and then close them all at once by clicking Close Group. This makes it very convenient when you need to work with several different tabs to perform a task at one point during the day. For example, when I need to reserve a pickleball court for my crew, I need a weather site, the court reservation site, and TeamSnap. I don't need to keep all of those sites open (and consuming resources) all the time.

Once I created about five groups in one category, a problem arose because there's not enough horizontal space on my laptop screen to display more groups after that. However, if you click on Minimize at the top right of the group, it will reduce the group to a thin sliver with the name of the group displayed vertically.

I still need to import some tabs that I have squirreled away in a few Read Later folders and such, but I have reduced my open tab count to just 46. It's a liberating feeling and my web browser is now significantly more useful. The price of tabExtend is $6 per month when purchased annually.

I'm not an expert on this subject, so if you have any product recommendations or suggestions about how one should organize their browser tabs, please share with us by leaving a comment below.

Web Browser Tab Management

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