How I stay focused when having plenty of tabs opened?

As a programmer, I usually have plenty of tabs — mostly opened for research and keeping track of bugs, features and issues in project management software. This makes it difficult for me to keep track on which problem I am currently working on. I have to mentally annotate which issue I am working and on which tab it’s found.

As I use my email account to log in GitLab, Invision and Open Project, I prefer using a single browser window with their respective tabs opened. For research requiring more focus, I then use a separate browser such as Firefox.

I use the same window as the tab is visible and I can put the browser on full screen. This work-flow is easier for me as I don’t have to switch endlessly between windows.

What is my solution?

One of my favourite productivity hacks with using WebStorm for Web Development, is the IDE highlighting of opened file tabs — that have been modified and saved but not yet committed. I can easily navigate back and forth between different files without a big cognitive cost.

I always look this feature in my work-flow with other Editors such as Sublime Text and in Web Browsers. I tried looking for a similar solution before stumbling upon the Tab Colorizer Extension on Google Chrome. The idea is to be able to differentiate a tab based on a label or colour. I can assign a colour by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Space (which can be changed).

Originally published at 206.189.26.183 on March 21, 2019.