@Edent David Allen's "Getting Things Done" is helpful in this regard:

1) if it can be done in 2 minutes, just do it

2) If not, record it in a system you trust, and that you review regularly

I have a to-do list app (well, a vibe-coded clone of Cultured Code's Things, which is sadly not available on Linux) where I save the link, then move it to one of the projects ("Learning", "Software to build", etc). Tabs can get lost after a browser crash or bug.

@Edent A self-hosted Linkding instance at https://github.com/sissbruecker/linkding is running inside my VPN. I save bookmarks using tags with priorities (tr1, tr2, tr=to read). Additionally Hister at https://hister.org helps with recall.

@Edent
I browse using Vivaldi and can pin regularly used tabs, group sets of tabs on a topic and rename groups but probably more interesting to you is the use of Workspaces - save a workspace of tabs, say for open benches and then whenever you want to work on that activate the appropriate workspace. Works really well for me - well done @Vivaldi !

@Edent I'm pretty happy with @wallabag or using bookmarks in Mastodon. Do I always come back to read things? No, of course not but at least I know where to look at when I remember something weeks later. And it keeps my browser clean because as soon as I can't read the titles in the tabs any more there are too many.

@Edent about 2 years ago I just gave up… now I just … close them. The overwhelming feeling of relief is incredible. And yet a hint of betrayal and even loss lingers.

@Edent This thread is interesting. I'll keep its tab open and come back to it later. 😅

(Thanks for asking this question. 574 open tabs here at the moment. On one device.)

@Edent I use a browser shortcut I wrote (for iOS) that extracts the page title and URL and appends them to a specific text file. Very basic but sort of works for me.

@Edent
I am here waiting patiently for a solution. Those people closing all tabs don't share the same kind of mind. For me, all those tabs resemble the many parallel thoughts in my head and if there are only a few, I feel bored somehow.
As I can forget what interested me a few days ago and delete my history, a search would not help.

@Edent following replies with interest!

@Edent tab islands on opera are quite useful to me

@Edent Honestly? I can't cope with more than about 7 open. It does my head in!

@Edent I use a plugin that dumps the page as markdown into Obsidian (not o/s unfortunately) Frontmatter includes link to the original

@Edent I'm in the same boat. I plan on exploring Hister (https://hister.org/) as an alternative to the behavior.

My theory: if I can trust that the page has been indexed and saved by a better engine than Firefox's history search, maybe I'll change behaviors?

@Edent I wrote an extension that dumps all open tabs into my Readeck tagged by date. I can still retrieve everything, but it doesn't clutter anymore and anything I don't need can be silently forgotten. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabs-to-readeck/

@Edent I use the bookmarks toolbar for that. Tabs are unlikely to survive for me, and thus need something more durable, but also easy to remove...

@Edent You need an app that closes 'will look at that soon' tabs that are open for more than half a day.
Seriously.
If you have more open tabs than hours in a day... you need longer days.

@Edent I use wallabag for read-later stuff, and linkding for saving useful stuff. I also have a middle ground for “useful thing I want to try/use/set up, but not now” (e.g. wrong device) of saving to linkding and marking it unread there (I don’t otherwise use the read/unread status).

I had to practice putting stuff in those and closing the tab instead of leaving it open to “read later”, and that has now become habit :)

@Edent I have learned I don't return for the open tabs. So if they are related to some thing important or interestimg to me, I create Joplin note about the topic, and save the link along short wording why I need to check it. Then collect relevant other info into note as well. And immediately get rid of the tab. #Joplin is my choise, any note taking app will do.

I also enabled the kanban module of it, so I can add thr most relevant notes to my todo priority list.

Give it a try, this helps me in the info/task overload. Endless open tabs just add tto stress.

@Edent Every now and then I go to "Tab Zero": select all tabs, create bookmarks folder [<current date>] and close all tabs. (Usually this is over multiple windows, so the folders are [<date> 1], [<date> 2], etc.)

@Edent I run a local linkwarden (basically fancy Wallabag) and have a separate collection for “surely one day I’ll take a look”.

Not a perfect solution but it gets the job done for me.