this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Firefox

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TIL that on Firefox you can unload tabs from memory without closing them (self.firefox)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by AlmightySnoo to c/[email protected]
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The feature is called Tab Unloading, and weirdly enough they made it not easy to access despite its usefulness.

You basically have to type about:unloads in the address bar and hit enter. If you then click on "Unload", it will put the least used tabs to sleep. If you keep clicking that button until it's greyed out, you'll have unloaded all your tabs from memory.

This feature is handy if you want to temporarily switch to something that is memory hungry without having to close your 100 tabs.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm pretty sure that Chrome does this automatically. When I work I usually need about 98,000 tabs open at a time and often I don't actually click any of them but I need them.

Anyway I will often open a tab and have to wait to it for it to load. But I've played around with it and I don't seem to be able to get consistent results so I'm not sure what parameters it's using.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What the hell are you working?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Research :clueless:

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right now?

  • Internal ticket tracker
  • Internal knowledge base system
  • OneNote with the actual knowledge base system because the knowledge base is never updated
  • Corporate emails
  • Client emails
  • Spam messages blocking system
  • Shift timetables
  • Engineer to English random acronym guide. Unless you know what ROD means.
  • O365 files
  • O365 online Word document
  • Software phone app
  • YouTube
  • PC parts picker website
  • Steam website
  • UPS live chat
  • Lemme

So a fair few. Although I can probably close the UPS live chat tab because I'm getting nowhere with these idiots.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This reads like the dystopia in which every piece of software got replaces by a proprietary web application by some evil mega corp. What you need is at least a mail client and a word processor.

[–] Carighan 3 points 1 year ago

Firefox also does this automatically, and you're not supposed to mess with it.

[–] bemenaker -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, no you don't. IF you aren't accessing stuff on them, you don't need them open. Keeping 100 tabs open for later, is stupid.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It also doesn't affect performance because Chrome closes them as needed so why not?