split screen tabs & web extensions that manage tabs

david_k — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 23:38:38 GMT

I have several web extensions that help me manage tabs because I often have a lot of them open at any given time. One of the web extensions will unload unused tabs every so often (more frequently than whatever is the default frequency) & I noticed that on split screen tabs one of the tabs will disappear because the extension can not tell the difference between regular tabs & tabs that are split but visible side-by-side. What is the plan for supporting split view options in the tabs API? More specifically, I'd like to know what changes I will need to make for my extensions to make sure that if an active tab is part of a split view tab group then whatever tab is visible by its side should not be unloaded.

If this is possible already then that's great but if not there should be an option on the tab object to specify whether it is a split view tab and what other tab is visible alongside it.

My current workaround is to check whether the tab width is smaller than the window width but it would be better if there was an official & documented property in the tabs API to detect split tabs.

topic split screen tabs & web extensions that manage tabs in Discussions

split screen tabs & web extensions that manage tabs