TabGeek: Tab Suspender
Free up memory by putting tabs you have not used for a while to sleep. Keep pinned tabs, playing tabs and chosen sites awake.
Download · Features · Privacy · Full guide · License
🎬 See it in action
Free up memory by putting tabs you have not used for a while to sleep. Sleeping tabs stay in your tab bar with their title and icon, and load again the moment you click them.
The full guide, with every step explained, is on TechyGeeksHome.
📸 Screenshots
✨ What it does
- Sleeps unused tabs after 5, 15 or 30 minutes, 1, 2 or 6 hours, or a day without use. Or turn automatic sleep off and only sleep tabs when you ask.
- Uses the browser's own tab sleeping (
tabs.discard). The page is not swapped for a placeholder, so your tabs, history and bookmarks keep the real address.
- Keeps the right tabs awake: pinned tabs, tabs playing sound, the tab you are looking at, and (if you allow it) tabs with typing that is not saved yet.
- Sites that never sleep: add a site from the menu or the settings page. A site covers its subdomains too.
- Keep this tab awake until you close it.
- Sleep this tab and Sleep other tabs buttons, plus Wake all tabs.
- See how many tabs are asleep in the menu, with a list you can click to open one.
- Keyboard shortcuts:
Alt+Shift+S puts this tab to sleep, Alt+Shift+O puts the other tabs in the window to sleep. You can change them, and add one for waking all tabs, in your browser's shortcut settings.
🚫 What it won't do
- It does not save the contents of a sleeping page. A page reloads from the website when you wake it, so anything not saved on the site (like a half-written form) can be lost. Turn on Tabs with typing that is not saved to keep those awake.
- It cannot sleep the tab you are looking at without moving you to another tab first. Sleep this tab does that for you. If it is the only tab in the window, TabGeek leaves it alone.
- It does not measure memory. Browsers do not let extensions see how much memory each tab uses.
⬇️ Download & install
Pick the download for your browser from the latest release.
| Browser | Download |
|---|
| Chrome, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi | TabGeek-chrome.zip |
| Microsoft Edge | TabGeek-edge.zip |
| Firefox (142 or newer) | TabGeek-firefox.zip |
TabGeek.zip is the same package as the Chrome and Edge downloads.
Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi
- Unzip the download somewhere you'll keep it.
- Open
chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions).
- Turn on Developer mode.
- Click Load unpacked and pick the
tabgeek folder.
Firefox
- Open
about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox.
- Click Load Temporary Add-on and pick
TabGeek-firefox.zip.
Firefox removes temporary add-ons when it closes.
Build it yourself
The code in this repo is the Chromium version. manifest.firefox.json is the Firefox manifest. Run ./build.sh to make every package in dist/.
🧭 How to use
- Install it. From now on, tabs you leave alone for 30 minutes go to sleep.
- Click the TabGeek icon to see how many tabs are asleep, change the time, or sleep tabs straight away.
- Tick Never put this site to sleep on sites you always want ready, such as your email or music player.
- Open Settings for the full list of sites, the keep-awake options and your shortcuts.
⚙️ How it works
background.js notes the moment you switch away from each tab. Once a minute (using the browser's alarms) it puts to sleep any tab you have not used for longer than your chosen time, unless one of your keep-awake rules applies.- Sleeping uses
tabs.discard, built into Chrome, Edge and Firefox. The browser frees the page's memory and keeps the tab.
- The unsaved typing check only runs if you turn it on and allow access to websites. Just before a tab goes to sleep, TabGeek checks whether any form box on the page has been changed. Nothing is read or kept apart from that yes or no.
🔒 Privacy
TabGeek has no account, no analytics and sends nothing anywhere. It never loads anything from the web itself. Your settings and site list are stored on your own computer, and the "last used" times are kept in memory only until the browser closes.
☕ Support
TabGeek is free and always will be. If it saved you some time, you can buy us a coffee on Ko-fi. Welcome, but never expected.
🐛 Support & contributing
Found a bug or have a request? Open an issue or get in touch. Pull requests are welcome.
📄 License
GPL-3.0. Free for everyone, including commercial use.
TabGeek is an independent tool made by TechyGeeksHome.
© 2026 TechyGeeksHome.
Made with ❤️ by TechyGeeksHome
Website · YouTube · X · Instagram
