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] 5 points 1 year ago

It gets thrown away. When you go back to the tab it will effectively reload.

(It will attempt to save some extra information such as scroll position and form inputs but this isn't 100% reliable so I would treat it as a nice-to-have not something to rely on.)