Firefox should suspend tabs to better performance

[EduardoBernal]

Firefox isn't with useful tool, which is tabs suspender, it saves of much hardware consume and doesn't allow your PC stay slowness and/or your own internet, because tabs can consume internet and recourses in background without you use it, so that's important and should be in all popular browsers including Firefox. I recommend they base on auto tab discard and possibly performance tool (by Microsoft Edge), because auto tab discard extension is really complete and very useful, mainly it saves where you stop on certain time video and performance tool saves much your recourses on your computer and is very efficient:

[hi0parag]

I believe the unloading should be automated in addition to it being a manual feature.

Usually this feature is needed when there are tens of tabs open and at that stage it is difficult to manually unload each open tab.  Please check equivalent implementation in Chrome and Edge browsers

[VictorBrooks]

@perladuenas1wonderful news! 🎆

I just tried, it works as expected - my Youtube tab disappeared from the list of processes (-200mb).

Is there a plan to make this process automatic?

[0x415246]

I downloaded the latest nightly, but I don't see the ability to unload when I right click a tab.

Also, it might be nice to have an option to immediately suspend new tabs until viewed.

[John102]

As 0x415246 wrote, we need new tabs that aren't used, e.g. with "open link in new tab" stay suspended form the get go until viewed. They at least should stay suspended for some time until viewed or until no other tab is opened for some time.

Currently it's a big problem that Firefox loads all tabs that I open and want to view at some point.

Then Firefox loads 100 tabs, eating up all resources, even though I don't need any of them at the moment.

With that addition to the suggestion, that won't happen.

[Reno-Sifana]

Hi. In latest version of Google Chrome included setting for Suspended Tab in chrome://settings/performance like this screenshot below 

and on Microsoft Edge in edge://settings/system (On Microsoft Edge known as Sleeping tabs)

Mozilla Firefox should add this Preferences in about:preferences

Notes: Sorry i'm playing youtube on Google Chrome via Picture in Picture mode.

[Bink]

Any update on this? Says "Status: In development," but the OP is from three years ago. I'm a fan of some of the powerful features Firefox affords, but getting good battery life on my laptop is definitely not one of them.

[Jon]

@Bink thanks for following up! We're aiming to land this in Firefox 140.

[Jon]

Quick update: with Firefox 140, you can now unload tabs by right-clicking on a tab (or multiple selected tabs) and selecting "Unload Tab". This can speed up performance by reducing Firefox's memory and CPU usage. Learn more here and let us know if you have any questions 😃 

[John1503]

@Jon Hey, that's already a small step in the right direction but unfortunately still not something that can be compared with Edge's Efficieny Mode.

While you can put specific websites in the exceptions of not getting discarded/unloaded at all in the "Discard" extension, I personally would prefer it even more if tabs that I'm not visiting as frequently are put to sleep after a certain time and when in use again, they shouldn't reload entirely like the currently do, instead, they should simply "wake up" again in order for me to continue where I stopped.

I hope you understand what I'm talking about and maybe you can take this little information into account as well?