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The fans spin up, everything slows down, and you have sixty tabs open. You do not want to close any of them, because you will want them back. This page shows you how to get the memory back without losing the tabs, and how to make sure the sites you care about are never touched.

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How it works, in plain English

eggz Tab Manager uses Chrome’s native tab discard. When a tab is discarded, it stays on your tab strip with its title and URL, but its page content is unloaded from memory to save RAM. When you click that tab again, Chrome reloads the page from the network, like opening it fresh. The official behaviour is documented in Chrome tabs.discard.
Discarding is not closing. If a tab disappears entirely, that was a close, not Performance mode.

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The three performance modes

You choose a mode in Settings → Advanced → Performance & RAM. All three respect the same safety rules for automatic background sweeps: active, pinned and audible tabs, internal pages, and anything on your Protected domains list are skipped. Free RAM now is available in every mode and uses the same safety gates. If you would rather aim by hand, you can suspend a single tab, or all background tabs of one window at once, straight from the Open Tabs view. See Suspend a tab. The same protections apply.

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Manual, with no automatic discarding

The extension does not run timed background discards on eligible inactive tabs. Your tabs stay loaded until Chrome or you do something else: Chrome’s own memory saver may step in, or you may close tabs yourself. Choose Manual when you want maximum predictability and only occasional cleanup, or when you are working in long drafts and want no automatic unloading at all. Free RAM now is still available in this mode: a one-shot discard of eligible inactive tabs when you click the button.

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Balanced, discarding after an interval you choose

When enabled, the extension periodically looks at all normal tabs across all windows and may discard tabs that have been inactive longer than your selected interval, which the settings offer as 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes. Only http(s) sites are candidates. Internal schemes such as chrome://, extension pages and similar are skipped. Choose Balanced when you want steady RAM savings without the Aggressive five-minute cap.

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Aggressive, the same rules with a faster idle cutoff

Aggressive has the same eligibility and protections as Balanced, but the effective idle time is capped at five minutes, so inactive eligible tabs can be discarded sooner than your dropdown might suggest for Balanced. After you switch workspaces, Aggressive mode may also immediately discard some newly opened inactive tabs, still respecting the pinned, protected, audible and internal rules. Choose Aggressive when you run very large tab sets and want lower memory pressure between tasks, and you accept more frequent reloads when you return to a background tab.

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Scenario A: research tabs you leave alone for a while

You have twenty tabs open across research, docs and tools. Tab 1 is your main doc and stays active. The other nineteen stay unfocused for a long time. If you press Free RAM now in any mode, eligible inactive tabs can unload immediately, subject to the same skip rules: nothing pinned, protected, active or internal.

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Scenario B: switching workspaces, when many tabs load at once

Workspace A has a handful of tabs. Workspace B has fifteen. You switch, so the window now loads all fifteen. Tab 1 becomes active and the other fourteen open in the background.

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Free RAM now

Free RAM now is a manual button in Settings → Advanced → Performance & RAM. It discards eligible inactive tabs now rather than on a timer, it does not remove tabs from the strip, and it uses the same protections as automatic discard: active, pinned, audible, internal or non-http(s), and protected domains. Use it when the fans spin up or Chrome feels heavy, without changing your performance mode.

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What is never discarded

These are always skipped:
  • The active tab in its window
  • Pinned tabs
  • Audible tabs
  • Tabs that are already discarded
  • Internal pages (chrome://, extension pages, about: or new-tab style pages where applicable)
  • Non-http(s) URLs the extension treats as ineligible
  • Hostnames matching your Protected domains list
Add the domains you care about, such as mail, docs, banking and HR tools, under Settings → Advanced → Protected Domains.

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Multiple windows

If you use several Chrome windows, sweeps consider all of them, not only the one that was focused last. Each window can still have its own active tab, which will not be discarded.

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Measuring the saving honestly

Discarding reduces memory for heavy pages, but the exact saving depends on the site, the Chrome version and the operating system. eggz Tab Manager does not promise a fixed percentage. For a sanity check:
  1. Open Chrome Task Manager, from the Chrome menu under More tools → Task manager.
  2. Note the memory for a few heavy tabs before discarding.
  3. Trigger Free RAM now, or wait for your mode to run.
  4. Click a discarded tab. It reloads, and memory rises again for that tab.
That cycle is expected.

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The eggz web app is a normal website

Performance & RAM only applies to Chrome tabs managed by eggz Tab Manager. Your eggz dashboard at app.eggz.ai is an ordinary website, so manage its tab like any other site, with pinning or a separate window.