To avoid this kind of unpleasant situations, you can take advantage of the tab management tips below. Even if you have a computer with huge amount of RAM, and the internet itself is fast enough, the below tips to cope with the too-many-tabs syndrome can still be very useful.
Use Session Manager
Some of the most useful tools to use are extensions that you can find in your web browser if you know where to look for them. Session Manager is one of them, and it can help with a lot of stuff. It saves all of your open tabs and browsing sessions in case Chrome or Firefox crashes. Apart from that, it also lets you save sessions, name and rename them and group some of them. This way, whenever you need certain tabs to be open, you can simply look for the right session instead of having to open each tab one by one. In order to do this, you will have to go to your Tools and click on Session Manager. This is where you can click on Load Session, save the existing one, rename it, back it up and so on. This is an extension that’s typical to Firefox, but you can also find it on Google Chrome.
Take advantage of Tabs Folders
If you ever heard of bookmarking, then you definitely know what the tabs folder is. In case you need to shut down the PC, but still have lots of tabs open with things you need to read or work on, you can simply click right and select to Bookmark All Tabs. This will give you the option of naming the group of tabs – for example: things to read, work TBD or funny memes. Remember to make some space in the folder when you’re done looking at those pages, so that you don’t overload the browser.
Use TabGroups Manager to Group Tabs Together
Since having all tabs together has already been proved to be useful, you might also want to group them by category. When you’re still online, you can have all email tabs in one place, all those related to social media in another one or simply all tabs with pages from the same website in one group.
You can do that using TabGroups Manager – this is its name on Firefox, but you also get it on Chrome and Opera under the name TabGroup. The extension doesn’t let you rename the initial tab, but you can go to Tools»Extensions»TabGroups Manager and click on Options. This is where you will be able to choose your preferences and the way you want to use keyboard and mouse commands. Usually, by simply scrolling and bringing a few tabs together, you can create a group and give it a name. This way, all your “to read”, “work tbd”, “story ideas” and other tabs will be kept together. Instead of having one tab for each, you will have one row for each category.
Tabberwocky – avoid closing tabs by mistake
There are certain tabs that you always want to be open. In case you have lots of them open at the same time, though, the risk of closing it by mistake or someone else doing that is quite high. This is why it’s important to be able to lock them. Tabberwocky is a simple tool that lets you protect tabs in Firefox, but also does a few other things. For example, it shows the unread ones, lets you use multirow tab bar, duplicate certain tabs and many other useful features that you can explore here.
Use Shortcuts for Firefox and Chrome
Apart from the tools, add-ons and extensions that we get, there are also several shortcuts that let us go from one tab to the other in less time. For example, if you use Chrome, you should know that Control + Tab can move one tab to the right while Control + Shift + Tab moves it to the left. Similarly, you can reopen a tab that you just closed using Control + Shift + T. If you’re a Firefox user, you can also move tabs using Control + Shift + Page Up / Down. You can close tabs using Control + W or F4. New tabs are opened with Control + T and you can undo closing a tab using the same key-combo as you’d do with Chrome – Control/Shift/T. Besides, it’s easy enough to just change these shortcuts by using an extension. If you find it hard to remember one of them or it simply doesn’t make much sense to you, just go to store and look for Shortcuts Manager in the case of Chrome and Customizable Shortcuts for Firefox.
Use Built-in Tools
As you might have noticed already, there are quite a few extensions that you can find right under your nose. Some of the most useful ones though are the built-in tools that most browsers have. If you use Chrome, Opera, Firefox or another one of the popular ones out there, you will most certainly be able to find tools like Pin Tabs and Sync Open Tabs. The first one is something you have on all browsers, and it allows users to lock a tab just like you’d do with Tabberwocky. The difference is that this tool only does that and nothing else. Therefore, in both Chrome and Firefox, you simply have to right-click on a tab you want to avoid closing by mistake and select Pin Tab. This one will then be shrunk to look like a favicon. Pin Tab is a tool that only exists on Chrome, as it’s linked to your Google account. Therefore, if you use Gmail, it’s time to get Google Chrome installed in order to store your current browsing session. Apart from simply saving the tabs you were looking at right now, it also lets you sync between devices, so that you can continue reading something you discovered at work, even after getting home.
Organize with TooManyTabs
Most people who tend to have many tabs open don’t do so because they’re too lazy or find it difficult to choose which ones are important and which ones not. You usually need all of them to be open, but it’s also very difficult to find what you need, when you have so many of them simultaneously on top of your web browser. One cool way to make this easier is to arrange them in a visual way. A tool called TooManyTabs lets you see a preview of what each tab looks like. You can then group them by category, change their colors and names, drag and drop so that they come in a certain order, etc. This extension can be found on Firefox, as well as Chrome, and it’s free to use.
Use your phone
In many cases, you get sick and tired of sitting in front of a computer or you need to go somewhere but didn’t finish reading certain things. If you ever need to send your open tabs to a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet, there are tools that let you do that. One clear example is Chrome to Phone and its twin brother – Fox to Phone. They are both free to install, but only work with Android. You can get Site to Phone to do the same with iPhones, Windows Phone 7 and even BlackBerries. Once you install the tool, it automatically lets you sync to a device that’s connected to the PC via USB cable. To do that in Firefox, you’ll need to go to Tools » Options » Sync. On Chrome, simply click the toolbar icon or go to Settings » Extensions to send the necessary tabs to your phone.
