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TIL that on Firefox you can unload tabs from memory without closing them (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] 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] 109 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Your Firefox should be doing this automatically when it detects the system needs more memory. You shouldn't need to do it manually in almost any case

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Your OS should do this automatically, your programs shouldn't worry about cold memory.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Your OS can't decide when a tab is inactive though, given that they can run code, play media, etc. at arbitrary times.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

maybe @Eggymatrix ment swapping.
The OS tracks which memory-pages are used least and will swap them out when active programs need more ram than available.

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