Too many open tabs in your web browser can lead to a lagging experience. Also, it makes the top bar of your browser pretty cluttered. But for many users, closing the unused tabs is not a solution. But you can always suspend background tabs. So, how to suspend background tabs in Edge, Firefox & Chrome? Well, let me explain everything about it to you below:
What are Background tabs?
Background tabs are the same thing as regular browsing tabs. They sit idle in the background. But some websites might fetch data from their servers quite frequently, such as social media sites, Email sites, etc.
This leads to high PC resource usage. Your PC has to offer resources to support the tabs fetching its data. And if you have too many tabs in the background, it will lead to a lagging experience.
How to Suspend Background Tabs in Edge, Firefox & Chrome?
Suspending background tabs in most web browsers is pretty much the same thing. No matter if you want to suspend tabs in chrome or any other browser.
Since it can be done through browser extensions. So you will find a tab suspender for Edge, Firefox, Chrome, or any other browser.
For this tutorial, we will be looking at the following methods:
- Sleeping tabs (Microsoft Edge)
- Tab Wrangler
- Tab Suspender
- The Great Suspender
Make sure to check out each of these extensions, try them, and check what works for you.
1] Sleeping tabs (Microsoft Edge)
If you are using Edge Browser, you can use this Sleeping tabs feature. This feature automatically puts inactive page tabs open in the browser to sleep to free up RAM.
Once the feature is enabled, inactive pages will fade in the top bar, indicating that the pages are not using any system resources.
Also, you can awake the pages when you click on them. To enable this feature, follow the below steps:
- Launch Edge Browser.
- Go to the URL tab and type edge://settings/profiles to get into Edge’s settings page.
- Click on System and Performance from the sidebar.
- Over here, toggle on Save resources with sleeping tabs.
- Also, toggle on the Fade sleeping tabs – So you will get to know which tabs are not active.
- Below, you will find the option Put inactive tabs to sleep after the specified amount of time, and you can use this option to set a timer for your browser tabs. You can set your browser tabs to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity.
- Another cool feature is the Never put these sites to sleep. Click on the Add button to add the URL of websites you don’t want to put in your sleep.
2] Use Tab Wrangler To Suspend Background Tabs (Edge and Chrome)
You can try Tab Wrangler’s browser extension if you are not using Edge. This one automatically closes inactive tabs. It can be customized in many ways.
For instance, you can prevent auto-closing tabs for your favorite websites, save closed tabs, close tabs that have not been used recently, and more.
To get started with the browser extension, here are the steps that you have to follow:
- First, add the browser extension to your preferred web browser.
- After adding the extension, click on it, and you will find a couple of tabs.
- In Tab Coral, you will find all the data related to the suspended tabs. From here, you can quickly restore a closed tab.
- The Tab lock option lets you lock certain tabs, so they will not get closed or suspended.
- Lastly, using the options tab, you can customize the extension – such as changing the theme, closing inactive tabs, etc.
3] Use Tab Suspender
Tab suspender is another great extension that you can try out. It can automatically suspend, park, and hibernate inactive tabs and save up to 80% of memory. It is designed to accelerate your browser and purge the memory automatically.
To use this extension, follow the below steps:
- First, install the extension in your browser.
- Once you open the extension, you will find a slider from where you can set the duration for your inactive tabs.
- Below, you will find all the options to suspend and unsuspend tabs.
4] Use The Great Suspender
Lastly, you can give try the great suspender. This one, too, comes with some interesting features. Such as suspending opened tabs by schedule or with a single click. You can restore tabs at once or only one at a time, create a group of tabs, and more.
First, add the extension to your browser. Next, go to the extension’s settings – from here, you can customize all the settings. Such as suspending tabs after a time limit, adding website URLs you don’t want to suspend, and more.
Download The Great Suspender Original
Conclusion
So those were a few browser extensions that can be used to suspend background tabs. Now, check them out and see how they work for you. I recommend using Edge browsers’ inbuilt option, and for other browsers, Tab Wrangler would come in handy.
Does Chrome Put Inactive Tabs to Sleep?
Yes, Google does put inactive tabs to sleep. However, Chrome does not have a dedicated option inbuilt for this. The process is automatic and takes no user input. You need to use a browser extension like Tab Wrangler to have dedicated control over suspending tabs.
How Do I Snooze a Tab in Chrome?
You can snooze tabs in Chrome by running an experience. First, go to this URL from your Chrome browser: chrome://flags/#calculate-native-win-occlusion. Then use the dropdown menu next to Calculate window occlusion on Windows and set it to Enabled. Also, for additional customization, you can use The Great Suspender browser extension.
