The Auto-suspend update I previewed is now live in the Chrome Web Store. I built TabVitals for the moment when Chrome has dozens of useful tabs open, but too many of them are still consuming resources in the background.
What changed in 0.4.20
Turn Auto-suspend ON and TabVitals runs a scan-and-sleep cycle immediately. It then repeats every 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 2 hours, putting eligible background tabs to sleep without closing them. You can keep working while the cycle runs.
Active tabs, pinned tabs, audio-playing tabs, recently used tabs, and sites you mark Always Awake are protected. Sleeping tabs stay in the tab bar and reload when you return. Save unfinished work on a tab before putting it to sleep.
After each cycle, the popup shows how many tabs were slept and the change in available system memory. That result is an observed system-wide change, not a claim that every byte came from a particular tab or that everyone will free the same number of GB.
The manual tools are still here
You can still run the X-Ray scanner to inspect loaded tabs and decide what to sleep manually. TabVitals also keeps its tools for the current website: clear that site's cache, perform a full site reset, open it in Incognito, or remove only that site from Chrome history. Auto-suspend does not clear cookies or history.
TabVitals runs locally in Chrome on Mac and Windows. Auto-suspend starts OFF, so you decide when to turn it on.
Install or update TabVitals 0.4.20 in the Chrome Web Store.
I'm the developer, and I'd appreciate feedback: which interval fits your workflow, and which tabs should always stay awake?
Top comments (0)