putting a single tab into sleep mode manually to save cpu & memory

[glychee]

it would be very nice for us to be able to right click on a tab and just put the tab into sleep mode.

in these days everybody uses firefox browser with several tabs kept open. and some of the websites uses intensive javascript which loads the computer even when the tab is not active (most likely poor coded websites). i know there is a feature which automatically unloads (sleeps) inactive tabs but i dont like this feature because i dont want to pages contents refreshed even after several days of unused duration. firefox is really meets this requirement for me to keep the last look of a tab, not sleeping automatically.

but if i can just right click on a tab which makes my fans spin like crazy, and put the tab to sleep status until i need it in some time later, that would be awesome for me and for all firefox users.

the "manual sleep" button can be placed just inside the group of "reload tab", "mute tab", "pin tab" buttons in the right click menu of tabs.

i'm sure everybody will like this feature and hope this will be added in near future 🙂

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[Jon]

Some similar ideas here on Connect:

Firefox should suspend tabs to better performance 

Energy saving tabs 

A sleep tab-group function, where you can save your tabs in a group for later 

[brixter]

I wish it could be done in a group. "Sleep all tabs".

[secotioid]

Right-clicking on a tab should have options "Sleep this tab" and "Sleep other tabs." 

You can target a specific tab impacting performance, or focus performance on an active tab.

[secotioid]

Right-clicking on a tab should have options "Sleep this tab" and "Sleep other tabs." 

You can target a specific tab impacting performance, or focus performance on an active tab.

[victorchendra]

Yeah, I think we need this feature and so we don't need to install an extension.
Can't wait to see this feature 😆

[Manuel36377]

Create a feature to put inactive tabs on sleep to save RAM, just like Microsoft has done in its Edge browser.

[Jon]

(Note: similar ideas have been merged into this thread)

[perladuenas1]

Hi I'm Perla and I'm a product manger on the Performance team. This is actually now a possibility on Nightly. If you download the latest Firefox Nightly and right click on a tab you should be able to see the option to "unload tab." Please try it out and let us know how you like it! 

[glychee]

Hi Perla, thanks for embedding this feature and i'm very excited to test it now!

I'll deeply test this with unloading the cpu intensive tabs to see how we will gain performance for focused/active tab. i'll share the results here.

[Jon]

Good news...

This is being worked on — check out @perladuenas1's recent post in the thread for more details and stay tuned for updates.

As always, we look forward to continuing to collaborate with you all here on Connect 🙌

[glychee]

i have checked the nightly, but couldnt see it, is it removed from nightly to launch on stable release?

[glychee]

Ok, I have found the feature on nightly version 134.0a1 and tested with couple of websites which uses a lot of cpu. After unloading them, all the pressure on my cpu is gone instantly and my all other tabs became very responsive again, thumbs up for this useful feature!

Also I see that when I re-activate the unloaded tab, it showed me the most recent look of the page, it just didn't refresh the page which is very good. I also tested it on a web form posted page, and it didn't refresh and re-post the form, nice!

additional notes that can be developed further:

- unloaded tabs lose the thumbnail image of the page which is shown when hovering over the tab. Kept thumbnail can offer slightly better user experience I think.

- unloaded tab can have a different color than other tabs. This way users can determine easily which tab is in unloaded mode.

Thanks for launching this lovely feature