Ask HN: How do you use your web browser?

Multiple windows. Only if needed do I open tabs temporarily that are related to the web page I am looking at. I close and clear all sites. Ads and 3rd party domains are blocked by default. If your site comes up blank or I need to login, I usually move on.

Yes I keep bookmarks—I have a private “Link & one-liner” of the day. It’s a running history of what I thought was of note.

For sanity’s sake: uBlock origin, uMatrix, otherwise destroy all plug-ins.

Single window. Multiple tabs. Variable. Tabs get closed once dealt with. Tabs stay open if needed longer.

I use bookmarks. Sync with edge.

The marvelous suspender. Sometimes I'll use Chrono download manager. FFZ for twitch. Ad blocking takes place on my Intel 9900k pfsense router. I use an add-on that lets me Force pip on video content where Edge won't. That's about it there.

I use tabs all the time. Right now I have 29 open. I rarely use multiple windows, but sometimes if I'm doing something where I need to reference between multiple tabs, I'll open a new one for that. It's easier for me to go back to ones on my desktop browser where I have vertical tabs. On mobile things keep getting out of hand and I have 80 or so there now, some of them months old because they're going to take more than a few minutes to deal with and I never think to look at them when I can do something about it.

I don't really use bookmarks, but I did use Pinboard for a while. I do wish I had a way do to full-text search of my browsing history. Maybe I should just use Pocket more.

Top plugins - Right now I'm down to uBlock Origin, Tree Style Tabs, and Mute Sites by Default. I used to have ones that expanded links on Twitter and Google, but I don't know of any that actually work right now.

I'm on Firefox right now, but I don't know if I could recommend it over Edge if someone were looking to switch browsers today. I'm kinda stuck because all my browsing history is on FF.

Single window most of the time. I tend to keep the number of tabs open at 12-20 tabs. As soon as the tabs become too many I often rearrange them keeping only the ones I still need, and close all of the remaining tabs.

There was a point in time where I tended to keep tens or even hundreds of tabs open but I eventually realised that doing so was pointless.

I still have a bookmarking ritual though, where I bookmark anything and everything that is even the slightest bit interesting. Maybe one day I will be able to kick that habit as well.

The only plug-in I really care about is uBlock Origin on Firefox and Chrome. On my own computer I use Brave browser which has ad-blocking built into it.

Yes, we can be friends.

I have 70 tabs open - usually I stack them up when working on a project and then eventually purge when I'm done.

I use ublock origin and 1password.

I bookmark things on my phone that I want to do a deeper study of later (and then usually don't).

Mostly one window, but I also use dedicated profiles for different purposes, so I should say one window per profile. Sometimes I'll branch off a search into another window. I also keep several different browsers for testing and for snotty websites. Tabs, but not so many I can't keep track of them. Up to a dozen at a time isn't bad.

Bookmarks, in categories. Lots of bookmarks. And I have a custom home page with quite a few links.

Plugins:Dark Background and Light Text because I can't stand the glare of white pages; I have . . . interesting eyesight :p. uBlock Origin is my usual sanity armor. Enhancer for YouTube also preserves sanity. Not much else I use regularly.

I'm friendly. More or less.

If you randomly popped in, I'd be likely to have 2-4 windows open, as I like to organize by topic. Sometimes a single topic will have 2 windows dedicated to it so I can have things on both monitors. There are usually at least 5-10 tabs on each window. I have a daily review in which I think about closing but inevitably keep most of the tabs around indefinitely because I'm a hoarder and I might need them later. In reality I go on a tab-closing frenzy about once every 2 weeks and just close everything not related to what I'm working on.

I keep tons of bookmarks, organized into folders (Projects, Learning resources, School (separate from learning because school is a drone factory), Shopping lists, political propaganda, and Entertainment stuff like YouTube/Hulu). I keep even more "bookmarks" in my org-roam PKMS in the form of link indexes.

Top 5 plugins (LibreWolf/Firefox):

- uBlock Origin, because I hate capitalism and brainwashing ads

- Dark Reader, because light mode people can go suck an egg while they shine flashlights into their eyes

- Tridactyl [1], because keyboard-driven is inherently superior to mouse-driven

- HTTPS Everywhere, because why the heck wouldn't you want that?

- Dimmer [2], because I really don't get why people want all these bright lights, I mean what's wrong with light mode people that makes them enjoy pain?

Yes, we can be friends!

Links to lesser-known plugins:

- [1]: https://tridactyl.xyz/

- [2]: https://mehmetb.github.io/dimmer