Table of contents
As the amount of digital information we consume increases exponentially, it is not surprising that browser management has become quite a headache nowadays. It is like an annoying wasp buzzing constantly – not a critical issue, but just irritating enough that you can never be at peace.
If you are anything like me, you probably have over a hundred tabs open in your laptops, phones and tablets. In fact, it has been years since any other process in my laptop has competed with Google Chrome for maximum CPU and memory usage. My phone literally had 923 open tabs at one point – opening a text message would take 10 seconds.
After many failed attempts at “organization”, I finally stumbled on a workflow that is simple, easy, doable and works for all my devices and has stood the test of time. This post is written with Google Chrome in mind primarily. But I’m sure the hack can be adapted to any modern browser.
Tip 1: Step away from Bookmarks
Bookmarks are perfectly reasonable – they sync across devices and are a quick go-to option. But they do not work for me. They quickly spiral into a clutter, and an unmanageable one at that. It is never a one-step process, having a folder-heavy organization scheme.
When you have a folder-based scheme, well, things can start to get clunky. You start obsessing about folders within folders and which hierarchy to follow. Not to mention that mobile bookmarks automatically get added a different default folder, which then requires a painful sort and merge afterwards.
I use my Chrome bookmanager for only two things: (1) I primarily use the Bookmarks bar to pin frequently accessed pages that then are a click away, and (2) I sometimes add articles temporarily to my Reading List when I think they are a one-time read. And this fits well in my system since I use a dedicated Tab Management Extension.
Tip 2: OneTab to rule them all
Speaking of tab management, I use OneTab, an extension on the Chrome store (that can also work with Firefox, Edge and Safari) for my browser tab management. While I’m sure any such extension would work perfectly well with this system, I reference OneTab primarily.
I like OneTab for its ease of usage. It is a simple icon that sits on your browser. Whenever you click it, it converts all (yes, ALL) the open tabs into a list of links, instantly freeing up memory and reducing CPU usage. Hundreds of tabs, instantly into a list, at the click of a button!
Figure 1: An example OneTab interface
The interface for viewing the list is simple, and easy to use. You can reorder the tabs, delete unwanted tabs or redundant ones and group tabs together and give it a name. You can also restore a sub-list of tabs with one click of a button.
OneTab is also reasonably smart – if you restore a certain number of tabs and collapse them again using OneTab, it performs de-duplication. It doesn’t perform automatic de-duplication in other scenarios, but then again, I don’t want it to.
Bonus Tip: I’m not a huge fan of having third-party extension on my browsers for privacy reasons. So I maintain one browser (Firefox) without any add-ons or extensions, and use it exclusively to open sites where I have to enter sensitive information. My everyday, less-sensitive activity happens on Chrome where I have various productivity-enhancing extensions that I trust
Tip 3: Making it work for mobiles
Mobile tabs are tricky since the browser extensions don’t really work well on mobile devices. I use Chrome on my phone as well. It provides a nifty little feature in Chrome History called “Tabs from other devices” that lets us view all tabs from a different device. Unfortunately, the only things you can do with these tabs are “Open all”. Copy-pasting is a nightmare.
Figure 2: Viewing tabs from other devices
I follow a combination of steps to periodically free up my browsers in my phone:
- In my laptop’s Chrome browser, I open a new window and press
Ctrl (Cmd) + Hto open my browsing history. - I choose “Tabs from other devices”, select my mobile device and click “Open all”.
- I turn off my WiFi at this point. (Note: This is essential if you have a large number of tabs on your mobile device. The laptop’s network interface will hang, trying to open so many tabs that all want to connect to the internet)
- Then, click the OneTab button which will add all these URLs into its interface.
- Close the window and turn your WiFi back on.
- In mobile browser (Chrome Android), choose any tab. Touch and hold “Close”. Tap the “Close all” button.
Tip 4: Backup
Now, while OneTab certainly makes my life easier - it is not bulletproof. So to avoid a random crash taking away thousands of bookmarks, frequently back it up. It is as simple as clicking the “Export / Import URLs” and just copy-pasting the list of URLs into your document vault (Google Spreadsheets or Excel work really well for this).
That’s it! You’re done
Following these tips has made my digital life a little more manageable. Do I still open a lot of tabs whenever I sit in front of a digital device? Yes! Do I still have hundreds of links to websites and articles that I want to revisit but never do? Absolutely! Do I have redundant tabs open in my phone, laptop and even iPad? Heck yeah! But at least I know that I can control it whenever I want to :)