Put Unused Chrome Tabs to Sleep with The Great Suspender Extension

Chrome is one of the most popular web browsers around, but over time it has turned out to be a thorn in users' flesh, with its memory consumption sucking the life out of the computer and slowing everything down that you just want a better alternative. Thanks to a neat little Chrome extension called The Great Suspender, you no longer have to look out for a Chrome alternative.

The Great Suspender Chrome extension can solve this problem for you by temporarily putting to sleep tabs that are not in use. Here’s a little more about how you can use The Great Suspender to your advantage.

As with all Chrome extension, you can install this from the Chrome Web Store for free. Once set up, it will take you to a landing page from where you can access the Settings. Alternatively, you can click the extension icon at the top right of the Address bar.

The Great Suspender Extension Settings

The Great Suspender Settings page displays four links on the left pane. Under General Settings, you can choose to set the length of time after which tabs can be suspended. This can range from 20 seconds to 3 days or never at all.

By default, the options to not suspend pinned tabs, tabs where form data is input and the right-click context menu option are enabled. You can also choose to auto suspend tabs only if connected to the Internet or only when connected to the battery. There are also options to automatically unsuspend tabs when the focus is on them.

Below the Suspend tab settings, you have a Whitelist box where you can input keywords of pages for the extension to ignore. This will ensure that certain tabs you frequently use will not be suspended. Finally, there’s an option to enable screen capture settings that comes with a warning that it will use more memory, so best to keep it unchecked.

The Session Management screen displays details about your current, recent, and saved tabs sessions. The details here include the date, number of open windows, number of tabs, and links to resuspend, reload, export, and save links.

For power users, the Keyboard shortcuts section provides a list of the shortcuts you can use to suspend or unsuspend tabs in a window or multiple windows.

How The Great Suspender Chrome Extension Works

After you configure the time for auto suspension, you can simply open and work with any number of tabs. After the set time, the tab will move to a suspended state and when you get back it will display a message that the tab has been suspended. You must click on the screen to reload the page. If you close the browser, the suspended tabs will be retained.

When you reopen a window again, the suspended tabs will still be available for viewing but will still be in a suspended state. That way, all your tabs won’t have to reload when you restart the browser.

Final Thoughts

The Great Suspender is a fantastic tool for anyone who has the habit of opening umpteen number of tabs in Chrome and finding it a struggle to work with other programs on the computer. Now, you can leave your Twitter account open, as well as your email and still work fluently with your system before checking back in to your open tabs.