Woman panics after 7,500 tabs she kept open for two years crashed

When it comes to keeping tabs open while browsing the internet, there isn't much of a middle ground.

You're either someone who simply can't stand the clutter of having multiple websites open at once, or you're more than happy to hoard hundreds of browser windows 'just in case' they might come in handy one day.

But this woman has really taken the biscuit with her obsession with keeping tabs open, as she proudly acquired a whopping 7,500 open web pages on Firefox over a more than two-year period.

Tracking down the right tab she wanted must have been like finding a needle in a haystack for software engineer Hazel, so you'd think that she might be grateful when they all suddenly disappeared to give her browser a fresh start.

However, much to the surprise of people who prefer to keep their tabs to a minimum, she was begging for help on X hoping that someone could help her get them back.

The software engineer was left gutted when she lost thousands of tabs she had collected over more than two years. (X/sodiumpen)

The social media user shared a frustrated post explaining that Firefox had 'refused to restore' her session which she had going for over two years in the Mozilla browser, which was overloaded with a staggering 7,470 open tabs.

She wrote: "Firefox refused to restore my session that I've had going for 2+ years....over 7k tabs down the drain...."

The tweet left fellow internet users flabbergasted, as people just couldn't believe she had coped with seeing thousands of tiny tabs at the top of her browser for such a long length of time.

One joked: "Sounds like it was a much needed intervention."

Another said: "That must feel like being reborn. Congrats!"

A third added: "Hearing that volume of tabs has given me crazy anxiety."

A fourth laughed: "So your life is back?"

After the initial panic regarding the loss of more than two years worth of internet surfing had subsided, Hazel was luckily about to restore her huge catalogue of tabs thanks to Firefox's profile cache function.

She said it took 'no more than a minute' for the 7,470 web pages to make a comeback, while thanking the few sympathetic people her post had reached for their advice.

Hazel wrote: "Thank you to everyone who provided info on how to restore an old session from the profiles cache...I feel like a part of me is restored."

Thankfully for Hazel, Firefox profile cache came to the rescue. (LEON NEAL/AFP via Getty Images)

To be fair, there is not a cat in hell's chance she would have been able to recall the 7,470 sites she had visited and thought she'd save for later - so thank God for Firefox profile cache, eh?

Hazel explained that despite what people may presume, the impact on her laptop's memory is 'marginal' while she also had no complaints about the tabs slowing down her device's speed.

She added: "The session file which contains the tab information is only about 70mb, and Firefox only loads a tab in memory if I've opened it recently."

Explaining it further, she told PCMag: "Firefox is quite memory efficient and isn't actually loading the websites unless I click on the tab - so it's not very resource intensive."

A representative from Mozilla also confirmed Hazel's theories about misconceptions surrounding tab hoarding to the publication, saying that having loads open takes up 'practically no memory whatsoever'.

"We’ve been working hard on the performance of Firefox over the last several years, and we’re glad to see the results of those efforts paying off," the web giant added.

"We're working hard to provide people with even better tools for managing dozens to thousands of tabs. While we think it's amazing that anyone has 7,000 active tabs, it also shows the degree to which tab management is a common problem."

Topics: Technology, Viral, Twitter, Social Media

Olivia Burke

Olivia is a journalist at LADbible Group with more than five years of experience and has worked for a number of top publishers, including News UK. She also enjoys writing food reviews (as well as the eating part). She is a stereotypical reality TV addict, but still finds time for a serious documentary.

@livburke_