Mozilla has added automatic tab unloading to Firefox Nightly for Windows. This should improve the out-of-memory situation when using the browser. Development of this feature began over 10 years ago, but the developers never added it to Mozilla because they found bugs several times. The automatic tab unloading feature is now part of Firefox Nightly 93, and it looks like it will soon appear in the stable version of the browser for Windows, which is scheduled for release later this year.
The main goal of the new feature is to reduce the number of Firefox crashes caused by out of memory, which often happen with this browser. To free up memory, Firefox selects tabs based on factors such as last activity, amount of memory used, and more. At the same time, the algorithm excludes pinned tabs, tabs using WebRTC, as well as those on which audio or video is played.
Firefox users can open the page about:unloadsto check the order in which the tabs are unloaded when the memory reaches certain thresholds. The page has a “upload” button that allows you to do it manually. The unloaded tabs remain visible in the browser address bar. When you go to them, the pages are reloaded.
The function of unloading tabs is also performed by extensions, the main purpose of which is to free up the computer’s RAM. The built-in function also frees memory, but its main purpose is to reduce the number of crashes. The company notes that systems with 8GB of RAM or less should make the most of this feature.
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