The Great-er Discarder-er

Helps Chrome run faster by freeing up memory and system resources being used by inactive tabs or old tabs

The Great-er Discarder-er - Boost Chrome Speed by Discarding Tabs

The Great-er Discarder-er is a comprehensive Chrome extension designed to increase the speed and efficiency of your browser. It works by discarding unused or older tabs, freeing up valuable memory and system resources. It offers features like preventing tabs to load at startup and an easy link to access Chrome Discards page. Effectively, it allows Chrome to run faster while using less memory.

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Extension stats

By: github.com/rkodey

Users: 4,000+

Rating: 4.63

(16)

Version: 0.2.1 (Last updated: 2021-10-31)

Creation date: 2021-02-12

Risk impact: Moderate risk impact

Risk likelihood:

Low risk likelihood

Manifest version: 2

Permissions:

tabs
storage
contextMenus
alarms

Size: 215.04K

Email: rk*****@gmail.com

Ranking

# 15,731 ▲ 246

Other rankings

#24646 in Workflow & Planning ▲ 7 #116 in memory keyword 12 ▼ 1

Other platforms

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4.21

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Not available on Firefox

Not available on Edge

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Extension summary

Analyze keywords

New Features

Discard all tabs at startup Prevents Chrome from loading all your tabs at startup, while preserving the tabs in your last session.

Discard eligible tabs Same as "Discard other tabs" but observes the current auto-discard settings, like skipping Pinned and Audio tabs.

Link to Chrome Discards page Adds a link on the context and popup menus to launch the built-in chrome://discards/ page.

Discarding a tab does not close or remove or delete the tab. It's a feature of Chrome that simply frees up resources and memory that the tab is using. Discarding tabs should let Chrome run faster while consuming less memory.

Please post all bug reports here: https://github.com/rkodey/the-great-er-discarder-er/issues

User reviews

These summaries are automatically generated weekly using AI based on recent user reviews. Chrome Web Store does not verify user reviews, so some user reviews may be inaccurate, spammy, or outdated.

Pros

Helps make Chrome more usable by managing tab resources effectively.
Improves performance by reducing memory consumption.
Provides a feature to discard all tabs on startup, enhancing browser speed.
Users report faster reloads when returning to suspended tabs.
Great for users with low-end devices, reducing lag when opening numerous tabs.

Cons

Key features like 'Discard all tabs at startup' do not work for some users, especially on Vivaldi.
Lacks UI indicators to clearly show when a tab is unloaded.
Interference with other extensions (like 'Lazy Loading Restored Tabs' in Vivaldi') can cause performance issues.
May not fully support tab stacks in certain browsers.

Most mentioned

The 'Discard all tabs at startup' feature is crucial but not functioning for some users.
Performance improvements noted after using the extension.
Issue with compatibility with other extensions.
The ability to open tabs in an unloaded state for reduced resource usage.
Design and usability aspects can take time to get used to.

User reviews

Remains 'active' when restoring session with lots of tabs so can 'unload' them (like 'sloth' but without the silly popup issue), but would be way better if this extension could automatically open ALL tabs in 'unloaded' state ALL THE TIME, except for 'new tab' & directly opening a new page in the same tab by clicking a link. To rephrase this: The following should always be 'unloaded' & remain unloaded until viewed by the user ~> ~ Any 'page / tab / etc' opened by any user action that is not 'focused' as the 'active' tab (being viewed on screen by the user). ~ Any 'page / tab / etc' or group of them opened from 'sessions'. For example, when opening a session of over 100 tabs (just an example) all of them should be 'backgrounded' & not wasting resources, & ONLY download or do any 'activities' only AFTER they are clicked & viewed by the user. There is an extension for old Firefox called 'Bar Tab' that does this perfectly (for reference =) ~ Any 'page / tab / etc' opened during 'startup' that is not the active (viewable on screen) tab where page contents are shown. All other tabs should always 'start' in 'unloaded' state & never do ANYTHING AT ALL until AFTER the user clicks that tab to view it's 'contents'. As for NOT 'discarding' tabs, there should be an option to NEVER discard ANYTHING AT ALL (except maybe to 'disk' instead of 'RAM') after the user clicks & views the contents of that tab or group of tabs by physically browsing it to see their 'contents' on screen. In other words, when browsing Youtube, with a dozen tabs open, with videos paused at various spots, all the videos should always remain viewable & 'playable' at those same positions when the user clicks back to view the contents of those tabs. This helps speed the browsing 'process' on items the user likes, or everything =) Note: The option to only 'do not discard' on specific domains would be nice, as would the option to always discard certain domains when not viewed, with time delay options varying from minutes or hours all the way down to 'discard this tab whenever I leave this tab to visit another tab'. To rephrase this: The following should be discarded (at user option) ~> ~ The contents of a tab when the user clicks to another tab (either immediately or after user defined delay) ~ The contents of tabs described above only if they are under a certain user defined domain ('discard these domains' list) Note: A 'Safe List' to NEVER discard ANYTHING under certain domains (like for example 'youtube' =) More ideas at 'balkanguy (at) live (dot) com'. iCan pay U 4 various 'extension options' 4 this & other 'browser related' things if that helps =D

Dewd McMan, 2024-11-24

Just excellent extension. Anno Niem wrote a review on August 3rd, 2023 saying that feature doesn't work, but that's probably because they had "Lazy loading restored tabs" enabled which interferes with this extension. I noticed huge lag spikes with lazy load enabled and this extention discarding tabs at startup, it was like Vivaldi tried to load all tabs and TGD'er discarding them simultaneously. With "Lazy Loading Restored Tabs" in Vivaldi this feature works almost as expected, although it doesn't correctly understand Vivaldi's tab stacks correctly meaning it does load some tabs.