One browser window is not enough for all your tabs

On why you need to have at least a few browsers installed on your computer and always use multiple browser windows.

What kind of person are you?

Are you like this?

Or like this?

Don't be a tab hoarder. Don't use just a single browser window with all your tabs. It makes using your browser terribly slow, inefficient, and extremely annoying if you close a tab by mistake instead of selecting it. I've already shown how to search through your list of tabs, but that doesn't fix the problem.

Level 1: use multiple browser windows

And the problem is that you're not using your browser efficiently. Why use only one browser window when you can easily create a new window by pressing Ctrl + N or Cmd + N on a Mac?

I always spawn multiple windows to separate my work, my personal projects, and my leisure tabs. I sometimes use tab groups in the same window to make the tab width as large as possible. On top of that I use virtual spaces to separate things further.

It's the difference between having all your books in a pile versus having a room for each genre and a bookshelf for each author within a genre. Surely, it's not the best comparison, but compartmentalizing is important, especially if you always have a few dozen tabs open at all times.

My current setup is something like this:

• Desktop 1: one browser window for personal stuff, mostly reading and browsing without a particular direction plus one browser window just for Subtack.

• Desktop 2: one browser window for editing and writing on BinaryFork, plus one browser window for SEO.

• Desktop 3: one browser window for each freelancing project I'm working on.

• Desktop 4: one browser window for the specific tools we're using at work and another browser window for specific projects.

Level 2: use multiple browsers

All these browser windows are from Edge, my currently preferred browser. I also have Firefox installed where I only have one window with the websites I still do maintenance for.

Chrome is also installed on my computer and ready to go at any time. There's only one Chrome session saved, and that's for specific reports such as advertising income, affiliate marketing, traffic analytics.

The beauty of using multiple browsers instead of multiple windows is that I'm able to close them at any time and when I start them again, I'm ready to resume work.

If I only use one browser with multiple windows that's a little bit complicated, because once you close a window it is harder to bring it back from the recent browsing history.

Also, once it falls out of recent browsing history it's gone. There are extensions that work (I use Tabox) for saving browser windows as some sort of bookmark groups, but it's not as easy as just using multiple browsers.

There are other advantages of using more than one browser. For some professions, like web developers, that's a requirement because you must check how the website you're working on works in all major browsers.

But there are also advantages for normal folks. If some website doesn't load properly because one browser blocks some trackers or scripts, you can just fire another browser and see if it displays there properly, instead of messing with the settings.

You could also use multiple browser profiles, which most Chromium based browsers support (Chrome, Edge, Brave). Each browser profile works like a separate browser, keeping track of the last session, but that's almost the same as installing separate browsers, because you have to manage each profile separately.

This is probably why I don't use browser profiles and I prefer to have all major browsers installed.

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