It really doesn’t matter how much you like Google Chrome, it’s one of the heaviest web browsers of all times. There’s no one denying how much RAM it consumes! In my case, even some tabs may end up eating 0.5GB to 1GB of RAM all by itself! Despite the fact that Chrome is RAM hungry, people still love it pretty much because of its sheer power, flexibility and simplicity.

Do you want to take control over Chrome’s hungriness? Let me introduce you to The Great Suspender. Don’t forget to check out all the new possible interface designs of Chrome!

The Great Suspender

This is a Chrome extension that can save you free up all the unnecessary RAM usage. It’s basically a tab suspender app that will automatically suspend a tab that you’re not using for a longer period of time. When the tab is suspended, the extension will remember its URL and whenever you need it, The Great Suspender will reload the tab for you.

Thus, it will free up RAM space over time. You can also set the time limit when the extension will suspend a tab and reload it. Note that the extension can’t suspend some tabs like tabs on Chrome web store. Make sure that you close them manually for freeing up space.

Getting The Great Suspender

Get the extension from Chrome Web Store.

Once installed, you’ll notice the Great Suspender icon at the Chrome menu.

When you click it, you’ll have the options to suspend the current tab or whitelist the current site and others.

If you don’t want to click there, just right-click inside a tab and there it is! All the options for controlling the current tab’s memory usage.

At the “Settings” page, you can find out a number of other options like the time limit for any tab, session management and keyboard shortcuts.

I recommend keeping the time limit for suspending tab at 1-2 hours because for any average user, this time is more than enough to ensure that the tab is not used anymore. If you’re a power user, then you can change the limit to higher, like 4-6 hours or something like that.

Let’s check out what happens when a tab is suspended.

If you want to access the tab, just click in the blue area and the webpage will reload.

It’s strongly recommended that you whitelist the sites where you do writing and other types of work that, if suspended, will be lost.

Enjoy!