Too many tabs in your browser?

Well, there are too many tabs in my browser, to say the least! Therefore I would like to share one lifehack to make our lives a bit easier.

The problem

First of all, I’d explain my browser usage pattern. I usually have some tabs open all the time because I use them often. I’ve learned to pin them to make them smaller so that the other tabs that I use for work and research would have more space.

pinned tabs

As you see from the image above, the pinned tabs still take a lot of precious space.

Another problem with this setup is that if you leave your browser and want to use a specific tab, you’d need to do two switches. First, you would switch back to the browser, and then you’d switch to your tab.

task switcher

One more problem is that if you are bilingual like me, you’d want to type in different tabs with different languages. So there is one more switch that needs to be done and also a cognitive load to determine if it is the correct language that you’re using.

language switcher

So, what could be done about it?

The solution

I suggest creating shortcuts of pinned sites so they would work the same as native applications installed in your system.

In Chrome you would create a shortcut to the desktop like this:

create a shortcut in Chrome

And select “Open as window”:

open shortcut as a window in Chrome

That is it! Now you have all your important tabs on the desktop working as native applications.

desktop shortcuts

Summary

So, here is what all of this gives us:

• we can finally free the browser tab-bar precious real estate from these tabs
• we can switch between our applications/tabs in a single action using our operating system task switcher (ALT-TAB)
• we can set a different language for each application/tab

This technique also works on mobile devices. Safari can do it too 😉.

PS

There is a thing called PWA, using which web developers like me can make websites and utilize the power of native applications.

PWA’s has many advantages over native applications:

• No need for installation, you can use applications immediately and create shortcuts as described above.
• No need to update, applications will update on-the-fly, and take only a fraction of the size compared to native apps.
• The apps are safe and work on any device because they are basically websites.
• You should know that native mobile applications owners have to pay a 30% royalty on their revenue, so this goes out of your pocket. And how many applications a regulator simply did not allow to be published in the App Store because they were cutting off competitors 💰, we would never know.
• Developers would need to create and support only a single application instead of doing it over and over again for different operating systems and even devices. That will bring better apps and more features at a lower cost faster. See, I’m worried about your hard-earned buck again here 😙.

Consequently, I say we should embrace web applications and strive to use them instead of native applications, for a better world.

Thank you!