Discards tabs that are inactive for 3 minutes to free up memory, while still preserving the tabs state when you click on them again. No privileged permissions required.
Simple Discard Tab is a Firefox add-on that automatically discards inactive tabs after a specified period to free up memory. It uses the browser's native discard function, hibernating the tab but preserving its state. Unlike similar extensions, Simple Discard Tab requires no privileged permissions, ensuring user privacy and security.
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This extension uses the browser's own "discard" function to "discard" tabs that are inactive for 3 minutes (configurable).
Discarding a tab is similar to hibernating it. The tab won't run in the background and all timers on the page will stop. But as soon as you click on the tab again, your tab will be restored with all it's history and scroll position.
Discarded tabs consume less memory than hidden tabs.
This function is an innate function of the browser but the browser is very passive in using it. This extension only monitors your tabs once every minute to see if they are older than 3 minutes and calls that function manually.
This extension is similar to other extensions out there except this extension requires no privileged permissions because it specifically doesn't add features that require extra privileges. This means it cannot be used to spy on users unlike The Great Suspender. Therefore use it in confidence!
If you enable the "read browser tabs" permission, you can choose whether websites from specific domain names should not be discarded.
User reviews
Literally perfect, way back tried some other equivalent (probably "Auto Tab Discard" or that's at least close) and always had weird issues, as if discarded tabs were still causing massive slowdown and eventually crashes. Same with the identical functionality included in SideBery.
Haven't had any problems with this one yet. I was able to keep browsing comfortably with 3000 tabs without quitting FF for about 20 hours. Using the alternatives would have made the browser choke and die at ~1000.
A neat feature addition would be a configurable minimum amount of open tabs before tab discarding kicks in.