garyc.dev

When you open chrome, and it restores all your tabs, this extension unloads all tabs except the active tab

Latest Version

Version

0.0.2

Update

January 29, 2023

Size

21.21KiB

Developer

garyc.dev

OnLoad Unload Tabs Extension

When you open Chrome, start up Chrome... Chrome might restore all your tabs from your last session. This extension will unload all those tabs, so you aren't wasting computer resources loading those webpages.

As soon as you click on an unloaded tab, it will load the webpage as normal.

Firefox browser does this by default, and now, with this extension, you can have this feature in Chrome too.

Why did I make this?

I didn't like that I would open Chrome and all my tabs would start loading. I don't need all of them to load, I might not even click on most of them. I liked that in Firefox, I didn't need to worry about how many tabs I had open, since I knew when I restarted the browser, none of those tabs would load until I clicked on them (but the tabs were still there, ready to be clicked if I wanted them).

After some research, I found that Chrome does have this feature, but it's only available to extensions. So, I created this extension for myself, so I can once again use Chrome with tonnes of tabs open, and not worry about wasting my computer's resources on those tabs.

Additional Features

Besides unloading all tabs when you open Chrome...
1) Added a right click menu option: you can click this option and it will unload all your inactive tabs immediately.

That's it. This is a very lightweight extension. Enjoy :)

Note:
This extension only unloads tabs:
a) when you open Chrome, or
b) when you click the menu item.
It doesn't unload tabs at any other time.

Permissions Explained:
\"Read your browsing history\" - this allows me to search for and select all your inactive tabs, so I can unload them. This extension doesn't look at your browsing history.

Credits:
The extension icon, the computer with 3 gears, was created by phatplus on freeicons.io (https://freeicons.io/profile/51091).

Source Manifest.json

{"update_url": "https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx",\t"manifest_version": 3,\t"name": "OnLoad Unload Tabs",\t"short_name": "Onload Unload",\t"version": "0.0.2", \t"description": "When you open chrome, and it restores all your tabs, this extension unloads all tabs except the active tab",\t"homepage_url": "https://garyc.dev",\t"icons": {\t\t"32": "icons/unload32.png",\t\t"48": "icons/unload48.png",\t\t"96": "icons/unload96.png",\t\t"128": "icons/unload128.png"\t},\t"permissions": [\t\t"tabs",\t\t"contextMenus"\t],\t"background": {\t\t"service_worker": "background.js"\t},\t"minimum_chrome_version": "89"}

Download CRX(21.21KiB)