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halt tab execution if not in foreground, suspend all tabs not in view

  • 5 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by qwertz66

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This problem has been bothering me and friends for a long time. We keep hundreds of tabs open and this causes - depending on the viewed pages - very quickly high processor load with fans ramping up to max.

A temporary fix is to restart the browser with all tabs frequently - which also dramatically reduces RAM use. Because only the viewed tabs in each browser window are loaded initially, that quiets things down immediately - until more pages are opened in different tabs that use tremendous resources. Like Amazon, other shopping sites, probably some hidden miners (otherwise I often cannot fathom why it would use so much cpu).

I suggest an option for Firefox to halt/stop/suspend all tabs that are not currently selected for viewing. That is one tab per window. We have absolutely not the slightest need for any tab to do anything if it's not viewed.

In a pinch we sometimes suspend the whole firefox process via ProcessExplorer - but sometimes it doesn't resume and of course it also halts the foreground tabs. Restarting is not always possible due to pages with logins and other customizations that disappear on reload.

This problem has been bothering me and friends for a long time. We keep hundreds of tabs open and this causes - depending on the viewed pages - very quickly high processor load with fans ramping up to max. A temporary fix is to restart the browser with all tabs frequently - which also dramatically reduces RAM use. Because only the viewed tabs in each browser window are loaded initially, that quiets things down immediately - until more pages are opened in different tabs that use tremendous resources. Like Amazon, other shopping sites, probably some hidden miners (otherwise I often cannot fathom why it would use so much cpu). I suggest an option for Firefox to halt/stop/suspend all tabs that are not currently selected for viewing. That is one tab per window. We have absolutely not the slightest need for any tab to do anything if it's not viewed. In a pinch we sometimes suspend the whole firefox process via ProcessExplorer - but sometimes it doesn't resume and of course it also halts the foreground tabs. Restarting is not always possible due to pages with logins and other customizations that disappear on reload.

All Replies (5)

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Hi qwertz66, do you mean in Firefox 63? Mozilla isn't going to backport any new functionality to Waterfox, which isn't a Mozilla browser.

Firefox includes features to "throttle" bandwidth use by background tabs, but I don't think that prevents them from using CPU cycles. Mozilla has created APIs developers can use to suspend or pause tabs, and there are a number of extensions along those lines now. I haven't tried any of them myself, but you could try a search.

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Why do you mention Waterfox? It's not about bandwith, but of course a suspended tab would use zero bandwith. It's purely about energy consumption and on laptops this translates into dramatically reduced battery life and bothersome noise and heat.

Well, now that you mention it I find several add-ons. Genius! The one I immediately used is from this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/36qc63/which_tab_suspender/

It's called "suspend background tabs" and as mentioned in the thread the "only one" that does what I want, namely suspending the tab as opposed to unloading. Although I have to try the unloading option as well - maybe I can even keep the RAM usage down, then I don't need to restart the browser any more for days or weeks.

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qwertz66 said

Why do you mention Waterfox?

Next to your post, there's a Question Details section, which shows "Firefox 56.2.3" -- not a version of Firefox that ever existed. Clicking More System Details shows your browser is more fully identifying itself as Waterfox. Is that not true? If it's not true, see: How to reset the default user agent on Firefox.

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Are you restoring all tabs automatically or on demand?

You can inspect and modify related on_demand prefs on the about:config page.

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I accept the risk!" to continue.

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Yes, certainly on demand. But after viewing a bunch of tabs - especially ones with awfully terribly inefficient content like Amazon or news sites - then CPU load goes up and often stays up.

That brings me to another suggestion/solution we were discussing: It would be great to actually find out which tabs are doing something (unnecessary). A table like in a taskmanager under processes with columns for CPU load and memory would be great. Right now it is more blindly closing recently openend tabs and possibly hitting the crazy one, but because of the delay in fan/cpu load you can hardly ever be sure which tab was the rogue one - or it's several anyway.