7 ms·

That sounds hard. Is a USB-A-to-C cable in the A group or C group or neither? What about the inverse? What about cables that only do data but can't transmit eno

That sounds hard. Is a USB-A-to-C cable in the A group or C group or neither? What about the inverse? What about cables that only do data but can't transmit enough power? What about cables that are slow but high power? What about thick cables like USB4 that barely bend or fit in the bag? What about male-to-female vs. male-to-male? What about brand-specific cables that have their own abilities (say, high-powered but not PD)? The list goes on and on... I think I hardly have any pairs of cables that are similar enough to be interchangeable, and at this point most of them are USB-C, so they'd all mostly end up in the same bag if that's the criterion.

yerald 6d ago
Have an A bin, and a C bin, and stretch the A-to-C cords between them. Simple!
juliie 6d ago
My solution is a big drawer block with lots of spots for different cables. USB c cables with video go in the video cable drawer, high power goes in the power drawer, etc. Can't mistake USB c with HDMI (and mini HDMI can burn in hell). And only buy USB C cables that state their capabilities on the housing, if they don't I'll permanently attach them to a place where they can be most useful.
booty 6d ago
It's not for everybody (what ever is, rite?) and since you "hardly have any pairs of cables that are similar enough to be interchangeable" then congrats, you're winning at life and don't need anything like this. The sounds hard Doesn't feel hard to me. I have a bag for USB A, a bag for USB C, and a bag for USB A<->C. My USB-C charging cables are all 3' or longer, so they're visually distinct from the crappy little cables that come for free inside the package for various budget-priced gizmos. My Thunderbolt/USB4 cables are labeled as such, and I am very confused that you are talking about Thunderbolt/USB4 cables so stiff that they cannot bend to fit into a container or bag.... I mean, mine are stiff but not that stiff. Plus these are expensive cables. Not sure I have any spares. Those are bought for purpose.
- dataflow 6d ago
  Definitely not winning at life with this lol, it's actually frustrating because the cables are so similar. One has a higher speed, one has a higher power, one is shorter, one is longer, one is more flexible, one has a display showing when it's connected, etc... and in many cases it's hard to tell which at a glance so it's always a pain trying to figure out if I'm using a cable unnecessarily somewhere and unnecessarily buying another one because of that. Charging is an interesting case, I actually deliberately use crappy cables for that too, depending on the charging time I need! Re: stiffness: I mean I guess it depends, how big is your bag. I'm thinking like a freezer bag not a grocery bag. I could bend them to fit but then I'd probably mess them up.
  - Dylan16807 6d ago
    When I look up thick thunderbolt 4 cables I see a bend radius of 2 inches at most. And my very thick 15 foot 4K displayport/HDMI cables came packed in a box with a 3 inch bend radius. You can manage a 3 inch bend radius with a quart bag, let alone the 1 gallon or 2 gallon bags that I'd expect to act as reasonable cable storage.
  - booty 5d ago
    Everybody's situation is different but for me, it hasn't been too big a problem really. There are only a couple of places where I need the fancier cables that can carry video and have super high xfer speeds. Those don't move around because they're connected to monitors and external hard drives and usually come labeled USB4/Thunderbolt from the factory anyway. The rest of my USB cables are just rando charging cables... attached to various chargers sticking out of various outlets around my house. No data functionality required and I think iPhone and Android both warn you now if you're plugged into a slow charger.... so I don't really need to differentiate these... > Re: stiffness: I mean I guess it depends, how big is your bag. I'm thinking like a freezer bag not a grocery bag. I could bend them to fit but then I'd probably mess them up. A few years back I bought a crapton of 2mil and 4mil clear ziploc style bags in various sizes from amazon. The 6x6" ones are plenty big enough for nearly any modern cable, except for long HDMI/Ethernet. Then those get grouped into big 2x2ft ish 4mil bags. I guess maybe it is a bit of work in an absolute sense. But, it requires basically zero brainpower. I just sorted and bagged them all up when I was watching a game on TV or something. So it didn't really feel like work lmao
pampas 6d ago
Easy. One end in each box.
hamburglar 5d ago
This is exactly why my reaction to this was “who has one box of cables? Doesn’t everyone have an array of 18 stackable bins of cables sorted by function and vaguely grouped by vintage?” Don’t ever let anyone take away your wildly overengineered cable shrine.

yerald 6d ago

Have an A bin, and a C bin, and stretch the A-to-C cords between them. Simple!

juliie 6d ago

My solution is a big drawer block with lots of spots for different cables. USB c cables with video go in the video cable drawer, high power goes in the power drawer, etc. Can't mistake USB c with HDMI (and mini HDMI can burn in hell). And only buy USB C cables that state their capabilities on the housing, if they don't I'll permanently attach them to a place where they can be most useful.

booty 6d ago

It's not for everybody (what ever is, rite?) and since you "hardly have any pairs of cables that are similar enough to be interchangeable" then congrats, you're winning at life and don't need anything like this. The sounds hard Doesn't feel hard to me. I have a bag for USB A, a bag for USB C, and a bag for USB A<->C. My USB-C charging cables are all 3' or longer, so they're visually distinct from the crappy little cables that come for free inside the package for various budget-priced gizmos. My Thunderbolt/USB4 cables are labeled as such, and I am very confused that you are talking about Thunderbolt/USB4 cables so stiff that they cannot bend to fit into a container or bag.... I mean, mine are stiff but not that stiff. Plus these are expensive cables. Not sure I have any spares. Those are bought for purpose.

dataflow 6d ago
Definitely not winning at life with this lol, it's actually frustrating because the cables are so similar. One has a higher speed, one has a higher power, one is shorter, one is longer, one is more flexible, one has a display showing when it's connected, etc... and in many cases it's hard to tell which at a glance so it's always a pain trying to figure out if I'm using a cable unnecessarily somewhere and unnecessarily buying another one because of that. Charging is an interesting case, I actually deliberately use crappy cables for that too, depending on the charging time I need! Re: stiffness: I mean I guess it depends, how big is your bag. I'm thinking like a freezer bag not a grocery bag. I could bend them to fit but then I'd probably mess them up.
- Dylan16807 6d ago
  When I look up thick thunderbolt 4 cables I see a bend radius of 2 inches at most. And my very thick 15 foot 4K displayport/HDMI cables came packed in a box with a 3 inch bend radius. You can manage a 3 inch bend radius with a quart bag, let alone the 1 gallon or 2 gallon bags that I'd expect to act as reasonable cable storage.
- booty 5d ago
  Everybody's situation is different but for me, it hasn't been too big a problem really. There are only a couple of places where I need the fancier cables that can carry video and have super high xfer speeds. Those don't move around because they're connected to monitors and external hard drives and usually come labeled USB4/Thunderbolt from the factory anyway. The rest of my USB cables are just rando charging cables... attached to various chargers sticking out of various outlets around my house. No data functionality required and I think iPhone and Android both warn you now if you're plugged into a slow charger.... so I don't really need to differentiate these... > Re: stiffness: I mean I guess it depends, how big is your bag. I'm thinking like a freezer bag not a grocery bag. I could bend them to fit but then I'd probably mess them up. A few years back I bought a crapton of 2mil and 4mil clear ziploc style bags in various sizes from amazon. The 6x6" ones are plenty big enough for nearly any modern cable, except for long HDMI/Ethernet. Then those get grouped into big 2x2ft ish 4mil bags. I guess maybe it is a bit of work in an absolute sense. But, it requires basically zero brainpower. I just sorted and bagged them all up when I was watching a game on TV or something. So it didn't really feel like work lmao

pampas 6d ago

Easy. One end in each box.

hamburglar 5d ago

This is exactly why my reaction to this was “who has one box of cables? Doesn’t everyone have an array of 18 stackable bins of cables sorted by function and vaguely grouped by vintage?” Don’t ever let anyone take away your wildly overengineered cable shrine.