The Problem
Chrome eats RAM. If you've ever had 30+ tabs open and watched your laptop slow to a crawl, you know the pain. The Great Suspender used to fix this, until it got bought by someone who injected malware into it and Google pulled it from the store.
Chrome added Memory Saver but it's basic. No whitelist, no form protection, no control over what gets suspended.
What I Built
I built Drowzy, a free open source tab suspender for Chrome.
The key difference from other suspenders: it uses Chrome's native chrome.tabs.discard() API instead of replacing your tabs with fake pages. Your tabs literally cannot be lost, even if you uninstall the extension.
Features
- Auto-suspend inactive tabs (configurable timer)
- Smart protection for audio, pinned, and form tabs
- Whitelist sites that should never suspend
- Save and restore tab sessions
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Side panel interface
- Dark and light theme
- 57 languages
- Zero tracking, zero data collection
The Technical Stuff
- Manifest V3
- 306KB total size
- Uses
chrome.tabs.discard()for native suspension - Optional host permissions (no scary install warning)
- 80+ bugs fixed in the latest release including security hardening
Open Source
The entire codebase is MIT licensed. You can read every line of code, fork it, or contribute.
Would love feedback from other devs, especially on the approach of using native discard vs custom suspended pages. Open a GitHub issue if you find anything!
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