Tab Suspender — Free Open Source Chrome Extension

An MIT-licensed Manifest V3 Chrome extension that suspends inactive tabs to free memory. No analytics, no network requests, no third-party code.

⚡ Why Tab Suspender?

When The Great Suspender was removed from the Chrome Web Store for containing malware, millions of users were left without a reliable tab suspension tool. Many "replacements" appeared, but few were open source, and even fewer were built on modern Manifest V3.

Tab Suspender is the open source Great Suspender alternative you've been looking for. Built from the ground up with Chrome's latest Manifest V3 architecture, it automatically suspends inactive tabs to free up memory — without compromising your privacy or security.

Unlike closed-source alternatives, every line of code is right here for you to inspect. No hidden trackers. No data collection. No malware. Just a clean, efficient tab suspender that does exactly what it promises.

✨ Features

• Auto-Suspend Inactive Tabs — Automatically suspends tabs after a configurable period of inactivity (5 minutes to 24 hours), freeing up RAM and CPU resources
• Instant Tab Restoration — Click any suspended tab or press any key to instantly restore it to its original state
• Smart Domain Whitelist — Protect important sites like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs from ever being suspended, with an easy-to-manage whitelist
• Audio Tab Protection — Tabs playing music or video are never suspended, so your Spotify, YouTube, and podcast streams stay uninterrupted
• Unsaved Form Protection — Keeps tabs with detected unsaved text, checkbox, or dropdown edits from being suspended by the background. Enabled by default; detection is best-effort.
• Pinned Tab Protection — Pinned tabs are never suspended by default, keeping your most important tabs always ready
• Active Tab Protection — The tab you're currently viewing is never suspended
• Suspend & Restore All — One-click buttons to suspend all inactive tabs at once or restore all suspended tabs simultaneously
• Memory Savings Dashboard — Track how much memory you've saved today and over time with a detailed statistics dashboard and historical charts
• Tab Search & Filtering — Quickly find any tab by title or URL, and filter by status (active, idle, suspended)
• Keyboard Shortcuts — Power-user shortcuts for fast tab management:
  • Alt+S — Suspend current tab
  • Alt+Shift+S — Suspend all other tabs
  • Alt+R — Restore all tabs
  • Alt+W — Whitelist current site
• Context Menu Integration — Right-click any page to suspend, restore, or whitelist directly from the context menu
• Settings Import/Export — Back up and restore your configuration across devices with JSON import/export
• Beautiful Suspended Tab Page — Suspended tabs display the original favicon, page title, memory saved, and time suspended with a clean, branded design
• Badge Counter — See the number of currently suspended tabs right on the extension icon
• Onboarding Flow — Guided setup for new users with interactive demo and quick configuration

📦 Install

Chrome Web Store

👉 Tab Suspender Pro on the Chrome Web Store — one-click install, automatic updates

The Chrome Web Store build is Zovo's Tab Suspender Pro. It ships from a separate codebase, so its features and version numbers differ from this repository. Its core features are free; see Pro Version below.

Install this repository (unpacked)

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/theluckystrike/tab-suspender-chrome-extension.git

2. Open Chrome and go to chrome://extensions/
3. Enable Developer mode in the top right
4. Click Load unpacked and select the src/ directory

🔒 Privacy & Security

Tab Suspender is committed to your privacy:

• 100% Open Source — Every line of code is publicly auditable
• No Data Collection — We don't collect, store, or transmit any of your data
• No Analytics — No tracking scripts, no telemetry, no phone home
• No Remote Code — Everything runs locally in your browser
• No External Dependencies — Zero third-party libraries or CDN resources
• Manifest V3 — Built on Chrome's latest, most secure extension platform

See our Security Policy for more details.

🆚 Comparison

See COMPARISON.md for a comparison with The Great Suspender, Auto Tab Discard, The Marvellous Suspender and OneTab.

🚀 Pro Version

The Chrome Web Store build, Tab Suspender Pro, lists these features for Zovo members:

• A custom suspend timer from 1 to 120 minutes
• An unlimited whitelist
• URL wildcard patterns, such as https://docs.google.com/*

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⭐ Support

If this extension helps you, please:

• ⭐ Star this repo — helps others find it
• 📝 Leave a review on the Chrome Web Store
• 📢 Share with colleagues who have too many tabs open
• 🐛 Report bugs to help improve it

📄 License

MIT License — free to use, modify, and distribute. See LICENSE for details.

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Made with ❤️ by Zovo — Open source Chrome extensions for developers and productivity