If you’ve ever opened your browser bar and squeezed fifty little tabs together, you know firsthand how annoying it is when your computer starts lagging. Web pages are heavy these days, and keeping dozens of them open at the same time quickly drains your system memory and heats up your laptop. You want to save those links for later, but the cost is a slow machine that struggles to keep up with your original work. Fortunately, there is an easy solution.

There is a tab hoarding effect.

Keeping dozens of tabs open slows down your computer.

We all leave tabs open after a quick search, and they quickly add up until the browser starts to slow down. Keeping dozens of browser tabs open at the same time is a common practice, but it basically slows down your browser and forces your computer to work harder than it should.

Browsers require each tab to be its own isolated process to provide stability and security, but this sandboxing costs a lot of your system resources. A completely empty tab itself uses between 30 and 50 megabytes of memory just to create the base renderer process.

Once you navigate to an actual web page, that number grows exponentially, with typical background tabs sometimes using more than 100 megabytes of physical RAM, depending on how complex the media and underlying scripts are.

When you store dozens of tabs, whether they’re news articles, web apps, or video streams, your browser can easily use more than four to six gigabytes of RAM. High RAM usage is the primary and most noticeable result of this tab hoarding, giving your system the memory it needs to function smoothly. If you use a lot of tabs, this is better than cleaning extensions.

When your machine runs out of available physical memory, it has to start changing file paging. This is where it transfers anonymous memory pages from your RAM to your solid state drive. This swap can wear out your SSD and make your entire machine feel incredibly slow.

This is a preventable problem because you can just close tabs, but then you lose that tab entirely. Bookmarks become a mess if you use them too often, and it’s just a hassle overall. Fortunately, there’s a way to have your cake and eat it too.

Use Auto Tab Discord.

This extension does all the work for you.

When all your tabs start slowing down your computer, it can be annoying. However, like a browser extension Discard the auto tab. Solves the memory problem. Instead of forcing you to change your habits and close tabs manually, this tool proactively solves the problem by clearing inactive tabs from your computer’s memory.

It monitors your browsing activity and automatically puts tabs you haven’t interacted with in a while into a suspended, inactive state. A discarded tab uses almost no resources, clocking in at less than five megabytes.

It uses native browser APIs to eliminate heavy JavaScript, background tracking, and rendering processes that silently drain your system. This reduction in background memory usage means it quickly frees up your RAM for tasks you’re actively working on, and it removes the sluggish performance that usually comes with tab hoarding.

I have an older computer with little memory, and this tool has just saved me a lot of time. When the app unloads the tab, the page is not finished. It stays in your browser bar as a placeholder. However, when you click that tab again, it will wake up and reload the page.

The app also keeps track of your location on the page and any information you’ve typed into the box. This smart way of working means you can keep multiple tabs open for your daily work without slowing down your computer. This prevents the stress of managing your tabs all the time. This will place your placeholders where you left them.

I love using apps like AutoTabDiscard. They have a timer to close tabs prematurely. It will usually close the tabs you are not using after ten minutes if you have too many tabs open. Some browsers have memory savers that only work when your computer is already slow and out of memory. This app works ahead of time to ensure that your computer never reaches this bad point. Once you set it up, you don’t have to think about it or do anything. It works best while running in the background of your browser.

The app doesn’t need to be set up when you first get it, but it has a number of options if you want to change the way it works. You can easily mark certain websites as open if you need to update them. You can also prevent it from closing tabs that are playing music or video. It even lets you protect tabs, so the app won’t close them if your internet drops while you’re on the go. Because it works this way, you don’t have to worry about losing your work.

Local browser settings are not at the same level.

It’s true that modern browsers come with tools that save memory and solve this problem on their own. Features like Chrome’s memory saver or Edge’s sleeping tabs are built into the code, and they work fine for some people.

People who don’t open many tabs don’t have this problem, and those tools work just fine. However, these basic tools are not enough for people who keep many tabs open. It gives you no control over how or when the tab goes to sleep.

Most built-in tools wait for a problem before doing anything. Chrome’s memory saver waits until your computer is almost full before closing background tabs. If your computer has 16 GB of RAM, the browser allows it to complete. This allows your laptop to heat up and make the fans louder before helping. You don’t get your memory back when you’re done with the tab. Instead, the browser only helps when your computer is having trouble working.

You might think the built-in tool is great, but it doesn’t let you change much. It doesn’t have the deep settings that people need. For example, it doesn’t let you choose parts of a web address to ignore and instead lets you choose the entire site. These tools don’t have timers, and they don’t care how long a tab has been open.

I will not stop using auto tab discard.

Relying on an extension to manage your memory isn’t perfect. When you click on a suspended tab, you still have to wait a short moment for the web page to reload, which can feel a bit annoying if you expect immediate switching. However, if you want a machine that stays fast without forcing you to constantly clear your browser bar, AutoTab Discard is a great solution. The extension runs in the background; It doesn’t need to be configured to start, and once it’s enabled, you get your RAM back without losing your space.