If you have ever opened your browser bar to find fifty tiny tabs squeezed together, you already know how annoying it is when your computer starts to lag. Webpages today are heavy, and keeping dozens of them open at the same time quickly drains your system memory and makes your laptop run hot. You want to save those links for later, but the cost is a slow machine that struggles to keep up with your actual work. Luckily, there is an easy solution.
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Tab hoarding has an impact
Keeping dozens of tabs open slows your computer down
Jorge Aguilar / MakeUseOf
We all leave tabs open after a quick search, and they add up fast until the browser starts slowing down. Keeping dozens of browser tabs open at the same time is a common practice, but it fundamentally cripples your browser’s speed and forces your computer to work much harder than it should.
Browsers have to treat every single tab as its own isolated process to give stability and security, but this sandboxing comes at a high cost to your system resources. A completely blank tab alone uses between 30 and 50 megabytes of memory just to create the base renderer process.
Once you navigate to an actual webpage, that number grows fast, with typical background tabs sometimes using more than 100 megabytes of physical RAM each, depending on how complex the media and underlying scripts are.
When you hoard dozens of tabs, whether they’re news articles, web apps, or video streams, your browser can easily use more than four to six gigabytes of RAM. High RAM usage is the primary and most noticeable result of this tab hoarding, starving your system of the memory it needs to work smoothly. It’s better than clearing extensions if you use too many tabs.
When your machine runs out of available physical memory, it has to start swapping file paging. This is where it moves anonymous memory pages from your RAM to your solid-state drive. This swapping could wear out your SSD and make your entire machine feel incredibly slow.
It’s a preventable issue because you can just close tabs, but then you lose that tab completely. Bookmarks end up being a mess if you use them too often, and it’s just a hassle overall. Luckily, there is a way to have your cake and eat it, too.
Use Auto Tab Discard
This extension does all the work for you
When all your tabs start to slow your computer down, it can be annoying. However, a browser extension like Auto Tab Discard solves the memory issue. Instead of forcing you to change your habits and manually close tabs, this tool actively solves the problem by unloading inactive tabs from your computer’s memory.
It monitors your browsing activity and automatically puts tabs you haven’t interacted with for a while into a suspended, dormant state. A discarded tab uses almost no resources, dropping to less than five megabytes.
It uses native browser APIs to strip away the heavy JavaScript, background tracking, and rendering processes that silently drain your system. This reduction in background memory usage means it immediately frees up your RAM for the tasks you’re actively working on, and it removes the slow performance that usually comes with tab hoarding.
I’ve got an old computer with a small amount of memory, and this tool saved me a lot of time right away. When the app unloads a tab, the page doesn’t go away. It stays in your browser bar as a placeholder. However, when you click that tab again, it’ll wake up and load the page again.
The app also keeps your spot on the page and any information you typed into boxes. This smart way of working means you can keep many tabs open for your daily work without slowing your computer down. It stops the stress of having to manage your tabs all the time. It’ll keep your placeholders right where you left them.
I like to use apps like Auto Tab Discard; they’ve got a timer to close tabs ahead of time. It’ll usually close tabs you aren’t using after ten minutes if you’ve got a lot of tabs open. Some browsers have memory savers that only work when your computer’s already slow and out of memory. This app works ahead of time to make sure your computer never reaches that bad point. Once you set it up, you don’t have to think about it or do anything. It makes your browser work better while it runs in the background.
The app doesn’t need configuring when you first get it, but it’s got many choices if you want to change how it works. You can easily mark certain websites to stay open if they need to update. You can also stop it from closing tabs that are playing music or video. It even lets you protect tabs, so the app won’t close them if your internet drops while you’re traveling. Since it works this way, you don’t have to worry about your work getting lost.
Native browser settings are not at the same level
Jorge Aguilar / MakeUseOf
It is true that modern browsers come with tools that save memory and fix this same problem on their own. Features like Chrome’s Memory Saver or Edge’s Sleeping Tabs are built right into the code, and they work fine for some people.
People who don’t open many tabs don’t have this issue, and those tools work fine. However, these basic tools aren’t enough for people who keep many tabs open. It gives you no control over how or when a tab goes to sleep.
Most built-in tools wait for a problem to happen before they do anything. Chrome’s Memory Saver waits until your computer is almost full before it steps in to close background tabs. If your computer has 16GB of RAM, the browser lets it get very full. It lets your laptop run hot and makes the fans loud before it helps. You don’t get your memory back when you finish with a tab. Instead, the browser only helps when your computer is struggling to work.
You might think the built-in tool is best, but it doesn’t let you change much. It doesn’t have the deep settings that people need. For example, it doesn’t let you pick parts of a web address to ignore and makes you pick the whole site instead. These tools don’t have timers, and they don’t care how long a tab has been open.
I won’t stop using Auto Tab Discard
Relying on an extension to manage your memory isn’t perfect. When you click on a suspended tab, you still have to wait a brief moment for the webpage to reload, which can feel a bit jarring if you expect instant switching. However, if you want a machine that stays fast without forcing you to constantly clean out your browser bar, Auto Tab Discard is a great fix. The extension runs in the background; it doesn’t need configuring to start, and once it’s active, you get your RAM back without losing your place.
