The Great Suspender Arrives, Reduce Chrome Memory Consumption

System memory consumption is one area where the Google Chrome browser has always lagged behind Opera, Firefox, Internet Explorer and a few other browsers. While its rivals have always been leaner and hogged less space, Chrome has been criticized by users who run systems on low memory. A free extension, The Great Suspender is here as a relief to such Chrome users.

The positive advantages offered by Chrome makes its users reluctant to restart the browser at regular intervals or switch to another browser, two sure ways to reduce its memory consumption but less practicable nonetheless.

Picture - The Great Suspender Chrome Extension

The Great Suspender integrates with Chrome and lowers memory usage by suspending tabs automatically or manually after a set duration. The extension presents itself as an icon next to the URL bar of the browser. When you click on the icon, the active tab or tabs are suspended or reloaded. The word suspending indicates that the extension keeps a record of the information of the existing web pages before using a placeholder to substitute for them that hogs less memory and lets you reload the page whenever required. A single click on the tab reloads the page in the browser.

The highlight of the extension is undoubtedly the ability to configure the automatic suspension of tabs by setting the duration of inactivity ranging from 5 minutes to 12 hours. The tabs are automatically suspended after the set time period.