Chrome saves memory and battery in two ways. Freezing pauses a background page’s scripts while the page stays loaded. Discarding unloads the page from memory, but the tab stays in your tab strip and reloads when you click it. On a computer, the setting that controls discarding is Memory Saver, and the way to protect a site from it is Always keep these sites active.
To stop Chrome discarding a site: select the three-dot More menu > Settings > Performance. Next to Always keep these sites active, select Add, then pick a site from your open tabs or type its address. These steps are from Google’s performance settings guide.
What a frozen tab is
A frozen page is still in memory, but the browser stops running its scheduled work. Google’s Page Lifecycle guide for developers says that in the frozen state, things like JavaScript timers and fetch callbacks (replies to network requests) don’t run until the page is unfrozen. Browsers freeze pages to save CPU, battery and data, and to make going back and forward between pages faster.
When you return to a frozen tab, it carries on where it was. You don’t need to do anything.
What a discarded (inactive) tab is
A discarded tab has been unloaded to free memory. Its title and icon stay in the tab strip, but the page itself is gone, as if the tab had been closed. When you go back to it, Chrome reloads it automatically. This is described in Google’s article on Memory Saver and Energy Saver for developers.
Chrome has discarded tabs for years when a computer was running out of memory. With Memory Saver on, it also discards tabs you haven’t used for a while, before memory runs short. Chrome’s settings call these tabs “inactive”.
A reload is harmless on most pages. On a page in the middle of a task, such as a long web form or a web app, you may lose your place if the site doesn’t save it. That is why some activity keeps a tab active (see below), and why the exclusion list exists.
Turn Memory Saver on or off
- On your computer, open Chrome.
- Select More > Settings.
- On the left, select Performance.
- Turn Memory Saver on or off.
- Choose a level: Moderate (tabs become inactive after a longer time), Balanced (Google’s recommended setting) or Maximum (tabs become inactive soonest, for the biggest saving).
What keeps a tab active
Google lists these as things that may prevent a tab from being deactivated:
- Audio or video that is playing, including calls
- Screen sharing
- Page notifications
- A download in progress
- A partly filled form
- Pinned tabs
- A connected USB or Bluetooth device
To see which tabs are inactive, turn on Inactive tabs appearance in Settings > Performance. An inactive tab’s icon then sits inside a ring.
Keep specific sites active
- Select More > Settings > Performance.
- To the right of Always keep these sites active, select Add.
- Either tick sites that are open in your tabs and select Add, or type a web address and select Add.
How the address you type is matched, according to Google:
google.comcovers the domain and all its subdomains, such as drive.google.com and calendar.google.com..google.com, with a dot in front, matches that exact host and not its subdomains.www.google.com/financecovers only pages under that path.- An asterisk can be used as a wildcard in some places, such as
https://*for every https site oryoutube.com/watch?v=*for YouTube videos. Prefix, suffix or partial wildcards such as*oogle.comorgoogle.com/*don’t work.
See and discard tabs yourself
Chrome has an internal page that lists your tabs and their state. Type this into the address bar:
chrome://discards
Google’s developer article explains that you can find a tab in the list and select Urgent Discard in the Actions column to discard it straight away. The article describes it as a testing tool for developers, but it is also a quick way to see what discarding does.
Energy Saver pauses background tabs too
Energy Saver is the battery-saving setting on the same Performance page. When it is on, it works while your computer is unplugged or its battery is low. Google says it stops eligible CPU-intensive background tabs, but not tabs on video calls or playing audio. It is available on Windows, Mac and Chromebook computers that have a battery. See fixing Chrome battery drain for more.
Phones and tablets
Google’s help states that you can’t personalize Chrome’s performance on Android, iPhone or iPad, so Memory Saver and the exclusion list are computer-only settings.
About tab suspender extensions
Older guides recommend The Great Suspender, an extension that has been removed from the Chrome Web Store. Chrome’s own Memory Saver does the same job without an extension, and the exclusion list replaces a suspender’s whitelist. If you still want an extension that discards tabs on your own rules, see our tab management extensions page.