Tab Discarder

Manually discard inactive Chrome tabs and tab groups to free memory while protecting tabs you choose.

Tab Discarder is a lightweight Chrome tab discarder for manually releasing resources used by inactive and background tabs without closing them. Discarded tabs stay in your tab strip and reload when you return to them. Use Tab Discarder when you want direct, manual tab memory management. Discard one eligible tab, process eligible background tabs in the current window, or discard eligible members of an entire Chrome tab group. Every action checks the tab's live state first. FEATURES • Discard individual inactive tabs from a state-aware popup • Use Discard other tabs or Discard this window for eligible background tabs in the current window • View Chrome tab groups, expand their members, and use Discard group • Use Discard this group when your active tab belongs to a group • Search current-window tabs by title or address • See active, awake, discarded, pinned, audio-playing, and protected-site states • Review Recently awakened tabs and choose Discard again • Use Ctrl+Shift+L (Command+Shift+L on macOS) for the most recent eligible Recently awakened tab • Follow your system theme or select light or dark SAFETY AND PROTECTION The active tab and already-discarded tabs are always skipped. Pinned tabs and tabs playing audio are protected by default, and both defaults can be changed in Settings. You can also protect a domain and all of its subdomains. Tab Discarder revalidates each tab immediately before discarding it. Tabs that become active or protected, leave a selected group, are replaced without a verified replacement event, or no longer exist are safely skipped. Switching away from a tab never causes it to be discarded, and awakened tabs are never automatically discarded again. RECENTLY AWAKENED Recently awakened records when Chrome reports that a previously discarded tab has become awake. It makes no assumption about why that transition occurred. Eligible session-only entries remain available for up to ten minutes, allowing you to choose Discard again while all protection rules still apply. PRIVACY Tab Discarder works locally in Chrome, requires no account, and contains no analytics, advertising, or external-server requests. It does not send browsing history to an external service. Local extension storage contains your theme and protection settings. Session storage contains only the tab and window identifiers and timestamps required for Recently awakened. PERMISSIONS • tabs: read live tab state, titles, addresses, and group membership; observe state changes; and ask Chrome to discard eligible tabs • tabGroups: show Chrome tab groups and provide group discard controls • storage: save local settings and session-only Recently awakened state • favicon: show site icons using Chrome's built-in favicon service Chrome makes the final decision about whether a tab can be discarded, so a request can fail when Chrome refuses it or the live state changes. Current-window actions do not affect other Chrome windows. For bug reports, suggestions, or enhancements, feel free to contact the developer at the email provided below.