Tab groups - blessing or curse?

Software
1

I’ve been using the tab groups in safari for a few months now, and must say I absolutely love them! Or do I?

The thing is that where I used to go down a rabbit hole in 50-60 open tabs, how do I stop myself from doing the same in 50-60 tab groups? It’s a whole colony of rabbits now.

So far I’ve created a forums group (including MPU talk), an automation one, privacy, infosec, linux, docker, playlists, recipes, TV, furniture (can’t remember why), regex, kali, raspberry pi and a few dozen more temporary ones.

I do like the organisational aspects, but not sure this helps me really get the info I need. Time will tell I guess.

I’m really curious what everyone’s experience is with them?

2

I’ve only used them a bit. I created a tab group ahead of a shopping trip to IKEA to research what I wanted to look at/buy there. It worked well for that.

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3

I have about 5 but I’m not convinced they really offer advantages over bookmark folders.

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4

I do like the temporary aspect, I rarely used bookmarks, since they tend to go stale and need pruning.

Looking at the tab groups though I have more than 200 tabs “open” …

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5

I have about 40 regularly used bookmarks, and about 8300 in DT, formerly in Pinboard, dating back to 2002 or so. Never bothered pruning.

6

Thinking about Groups as maybe a short-term read-it-later tool—for articles I want to read in the next 48 hours, or never.

Or maybe that’s just overcomplicating my life.

Could use the Reading List for that too.

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7

I have started to use tab groups to organize, much like you have. I really like the tab groups. I was glad to abandon bookmarks. I found over the past six or so years that I never used my bookmarks folders (except my “favorites,” which housed all the most important sites I visit regularly). I would collect links and never use them. When I did try to use my bookmarks, all I was doing was deleting broken links.

Tab groups seems more “dynamic” and “alive.” I have all my news sites in a group; subjects that I’m currently researching are in separate group; I have a group for all my favorite running websites.

I don’t feel bad deleting or removing tabs from a tab group, or adding them.

Feels very “low friction” to me.

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8

I only use 1 tab group, which has one tab in it, my school email. I love it. School email is walled off so I won’t accidentally go to that tab, but very accessible if I want it.

Everything else is just in the standard, open window.

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9

I noticed groups recently in Chromium too and have barely used them. I am guessing they work the same way as in Safari pretty much.

I definitely concur on this:

10

When I first tried tab groups I thought they were dumb. Then I realised what they actually are, and that’s nothing to do with bookmarks.

All tabs behave like they did before. Leave it open and it stays there; navigate away and it changes; close it and its gone. None of these are traits of bookmarks. Tab groups are simply a means to have the 50-60 tabs open in some kind of slightly organised fashion.

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