And then sometimes the browser forgets that it should reopen them and I'm like "noooooooooo… but actually, I'm free now" and pile another several hundreds of tabs right away ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For the most time I just kept tabs open or used the post save feature in Reddit, Mastodon and Lemmy. That way I collected dozens if not hundreds of things that were vaguely interesting but I never got around to looking at them anyomere and when I was looking for something specific I had to check multiple places, each with less than optimal search functions.
Last year I decided to just create a personal wiki. MediaWiki is FOSS, easy to set up (especially with docker), accessible from all my devices and has a huge community because of Wikipedia. I have specific articles for different topics:
a list of things I might want to buy at some point
lists for books, movies, shows and games I want to read/watch/play in the future
a whole category of cooking recipes in a format that's more readable than the original versions where you have to scroll through ten pages of the author's life story, translated into my native language and with notes on what I changed from the original
articles for projects or questions that I never quite solve ("Where to buy custom printed LEGO minifigs?", "What scripting languages are easy to embed in a C# project?", "What's that weird bug that causes zfs to throw errors when my HDDs take a bit too long to wake up from sleep?") with partial answers.
articles about my friends with some basic facts like birthday, favorite color, favorite animals, allergies and things we'd like to do together at some point
and many more
Whenever I find an interesting link, I check if I already have an article that it fits into and if not, I create one. That way everything is roughly grouped by topic, I can leave notes and I have a nice search function and even a history that keeps references to stuff I edited or deleted.
Edit: the downside is that saving a link takes a bit longer, especially when I'm on my phone. Because of that I occasionally still save links the way I used to and if I still think they're relevant after a few days, I move them to the wiki.
I also run a personal wiki, but instead of MediaWiki I chose DokuWiki as it's much lighter and uses plaintext instead of databases for storing information. It fits me well and there are plenty of plugins as well.
The personal wiki idea is so insanely nerdy and obsessive and might just be the thing that pushes me to start self-hosting stuff. That's such an amazing idea.
Even more so when you consider that my initial impulse to set it up was to be a better host when my friends visit. Like the stereotype of staff at high end restaurants and hotels taking notes on their guests' preferences. I kept forgetting important stuff like allergies and now with the wiki, I have everyone's favorite drinks and snacks ready, plan dinner that everyone likes, that kind of stuff.
From there it was just a tiny step to use the wiki to keep track of other stuff that would otherwise sit in the back of my brain or in some badly-maintained list until I forget.
I have an insanely large amount of Firefox tabs. Sometimes I got back through them sometimes I clear everything and start fresh. Currently I have 80+ tabs
I read it now, cos I'll never read it if I save it. But I reckon the best solution would be to bookmark it/write it down somewhere. Don't ever just open a new tab, you shouldn't have more than like 20 tabs, at that point you're just never gonna look at them. And don't use a paid solution, why tf would you ever pay for that, even if it syncs across devices there are a million free ways to do that.
If I'm not going to read it on the device I'm currently on I use Firefox to send it to another device so I can read it later. Otherwise I just leave it open in a tab until I get to it. I have an e-ink Android device now so I tend to send text heavy things to it, and work things tend to only get sent to Firefox on a specific dedicated device.
I wish it had the ability to filter feeds. There's a lot of rss feeds that have good stuff interspersed with articles that are basically ads. Like just being able to filter out "prime day" or "the top X widgets to do Y" would get rid of a lot of fluff
Instapaper. I gave in and started paying for their subscription. It’s worth it. No other tool has come close to the simplicity, cleanliness, and power of Instapaper for me. It can handle most links, most ad removal, most paywalls.
The team became stagnant for a long time. But they recently declared they want to start reinvesting time into the product. That included doubling the premium pricing. But it’s the first change in pricing in almost 10 years. So it’s long overdue.
I use raindrop.io it's very pretty and easy enough to use. On Android I can use the share menu to store articles making it easy to use on my phone too.
If I'm on my computer, I use Push Bullet. It sends the link directly to my phone but I can also go back to the Push Bullet app anytime and find it. If I'm on my phone, I just keep that tab open on Chrome until I read it.
I used to have a folder in my internet favorites. Then browsers did away with browser favorites and I switched to having a "remind me later" section of my Discord server.
Browser bookmarks. My trick is I make a new folder every month, for example “2024-01 Bookmarks”, and put it in the bookmarks bar. Whenever I realize I’m leaving a tab open because I want to look at it later, I put it into the current folder. That way I know it’s not lost and I give myself permission to close it.
When a new month comes around, I stick the previous folder in an “Archive” section and make a new one. It costs nothing to keep them forever, but avoids the current list getting out of control.