Let idle tabs sleep. Keep your place.
TabDoze is a Manifest V3 extension for Chromium browsers. It uses Chromium's native tab discard API to unload eligible background tabs while preserving their URL, title, favicon, order, and browser history.
- Sleep inactive tabs after a configurable 1-120 minute delay
- Keep the active tab and selected domains awake
- Sleep other tabs or wake all sleeping tabs on demand
- Add a
💤title marker before a tab is discarded - Keep settings and estimated usage statistics on the local device
- Run without analytics, accounts, telemetry, or background network requests
TabDoze reports estimated memory relief, calculated at 50 MB per successful discard. This is a consistent indicator, not a measurement of Chrome's process memory. Use Chrome's task manager to inspect actual memory behavior.
Download the latest tabdoze-*-extension.zip from GitHub Releases, then:
- Extract the archive to a stable folder.
- Open
chrome://extensions. - Enable Developer mode.
- Select Load unpacked and choose the extracted folder.
Keep using the same unpacked extension folder. Replace its files with the new release and click Reload on chrome://extensions.
The checked-in manifest.key keeps the extension ID stable:
dhipcaijoipciglemoefjdlidjmjpnki
Do not remove or replace that key. TabDoze also keeps the historical tabSuspenderSettings storage key so existing installations retain their configuration.
Requirements: Node.js 20 or newer, plus zip for release packaging.
npm test
npm run check
npm run packagenpm run package creates a release archive in dist/ with manifest.json at the archive root.
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
tabs |
Identify eligible tabs, discard them, and wake them |
storage |
Store settings and estimated usage statistics locally |
alarms |
Wake the Manifest V3 service worker at the next inactivity deadline |
scripting |
Add the sleep marker to a page title before discard |
contextMenus |
Provide sleep, wake, and keep-awake actions |
See PRIVACY.md for the data policy and docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for implementation details.
TabDoze is maintained as an independent project. It was derived from an earlier codebase; provenance and licensing details are recorded in NOTICE.md. No license beyond the inherited terms is implied.
Bug reports and feature requests belong in GitHub Issues.