About Auto Tab Discard
Auto Tab Discard saves memory by discarding tabs you have not used for a while. A discarded tab stays in the tab strip and reloads when you click it. The README calls the browser's native discard function more efficient and less buggy than extensions that replace the page, which is how The Great Suspender worked.
You can discard tabs automatically or by hand, keep a list of hostnames or regular expressions that are never discarded, and choose whether to discard pinned tabs, tabs playing media or tabs with unsaved input. It is free, MPL-2.0 licensed, and listed on Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera, with a Manifest V3 build on Chrome. Chrome shows about 100,000 users, Firefox about 101,000 and the Recommended badge.
Weigh the permissions. It asks to read all sites, which its listing page says is used to inject a monitoring script into tabs, though its privacy policy says it collects no user data. The stores also show different publisher names: joue.quroi, tlintspr and Bermet. The GitHub README links all four stores, so we treat them as one project, but we could not confirm the people are the same. Chrome's built-in Memory Saver covers the basics, so install this when you want rules and exceptions.
Pros and cons
- Uses the browser's native tab discarding, not a replacement page
- Free and open source (MPL-2.0), on Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera
- Exclusion list for hostnames, plus options for pinned tabs, media and unsaved input
- Actively maintained, with a Manifest V3 build
- Asks for access to all websites
- Chrome has a built-in Memory Saver that does the basic job
- Chrome rating is 4.0 from 392 ratings
Permissions
It asks for access to all websites, plus idle detection, notifications, alarms and scripting. The developer's listing page says the all-sites access is for injecting a monitoring script into tabs.
