
Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome - srgseg
http://www.one-tab.com
======
jdietrich
Memory use seems like a really pointless thing for users to care about.
There's a widespread intuition that using RAM is inherently bad and low memory
usage is a worthwhile goal, but it doesn't really make sense. The key
performance goal is minimising latency, which is best served by using as much
RAM as possible without having to swap out.

RAM is now fantastically cheap. 16GB of DDR3 costs less than $120 in either
DIMM or SODIMM format, so there's little reason not to load out your machine
with far more memory than you'd practically need.

I'd like software to use _more_ memory, not less - for the vast majority of
the time, most of my RAM is unused and my disk is idle, so why not use an
aggressive strategy of pre-emptive caching?

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
I have 8gb. There was a time when 1gb was more than enough. Now you're saying
I should have 16gb -- and you're right!

This is Not A Good Thing. This is people throwing every last feature -- even
if it has a pile of 800kb of DLLs/SOs attached -- into every app, with no
regard for memory.

I find my system thrashing almost daily at this point. I need to upgrade. Two
years ago, running predominantly the same software, 4Gb was just barely not
enough, and I upgraded to 8Gb. And two years before that, cut the memory
requirements in half again. And again, and again, until you get back to the
1Mb of RAM I had in 1990.

There has been a trend to do exactly what you say you want for 30+ years. And
you know, some of that extra memory has been used to great effect -- we can do
a ton more now than we could in 1990. But a lot of it is wasted, just Because
It's Easy.

And that wasted RAM means pointless upgrades every two years; 99% of the bloat
at this point is for something I don't need or want. The ONLY valid reasons to
need 16Gb+ are if you're actually using that much data in one place -- a
server that needs to scale, for instance, or editing video, or maybe a game
that uses crazy amounts of data and/or video.

That the same apps are bloating 2x every two years -- and as a result get
slower, since hard drive and memory speeds certainly aren't doubling every two
years -- is really unacceptable laziness on the parts of companies and
developers in general. It's pretty much the opposite of a Good Thing.

~~~
tomkarlo
8GB of RAM is about $50 right now. If you have to replace that every $2 years,
are you really complaining about the cost of $25 per year on your $1,000
computer system? It's a rounding error.

Chrome, in particular, is generally be used for far more tabs (I have like 30
open right now on a MacBook Air) and increasingly complex web sites every
year. It's easy to look at memory usage and complain, but the fact is that our
usage and the size of the pages we're loading is also rising rapidly. If you
loaded Chrome from two years ago and used it how you work today, you might not
find the memory footprint that much better than the current version.

~~~
learc83
>If you have to replace that every $2 years, are you really complaining about
the cost of $25 per year on your $1,000 computer system?

That's assuming you're using a computer with user upgradeable RAM, and not a
new macbook pro.

~~~
jjore
If it's not upgradeable then it's disposable. Get the new one next time.

~~~
sneak
You say that as if MBPs have no resale value.

The ram upgrade procedure for the new MBPs is backup, Craigslist, Apple Store,
restore.

------
revelation
This is the equivalent of closing all tabs, with the added bonus of having a
list of what you just closed.

I refuse to compromise on functionality because Chrome can't get its memory
deal together.

~~~
IgorPartola
Firefox seems to be no better: <http://www.arewesmallyet.com/>

~~~
revelation
Thats alright. A single chrome tab is regularly >150MiB, and thats for plain
sites!

(edit: this seems to measure the size of the installer binary. I think you
wanted to link <https://areweslimyet.com/> which shows Firefox using <512MiB
with 30 tabs for popular websites open)

~~~
IgorPartola
Yes, you are right. That's the one I was aiming for. Need more coffee...

------
srgseg
OneTab developer here: thanks for all your suggestions, I'll be working on
them :)

A few FAQs:

1\. The OneTab tab persists even if you close your web browser. 2\. If you
ever close your OneTab tab, this doesn't lose your tabs. You can always get it
back by clicking the blue extension icon. 3\. Your tabs are never sent to our
servers unless you press the button to 'share as a web page'.

~~~
andybak
In what scenarios can I lose my list?

What happens if I click it, close it's list tab, open some new tabs and click
it again? Does the old list get overwritten? Is there any way to get it back?

~~~
srgseg
You will never lose your list. If you store multiple sets of tabs, they will
appear as "tab groups" in OneTab.

If you accidentally close your OneTab tab, it will reappear when you click the
blue extension icon or when you restart your web browser.

~~~
pbiggar
Brilliant! You should mention this on the site, it what I was looking to know.

------
barredo
Installed. This is pretty nice for the people who uses dozens of tabs as temp
bookmarks.

A bit of feedback: I was just typing this comment and hit the button,
obviously the comment was lost and had to type it again. Would be great if if
checked for focused inputs or textareas or something before closing that tab,
or that it restores the tabs them with the content.

Another idea I can think of is to "close" all the tabs that are NOT the one
you currently are in, or "close" all the tabs on the right of the current one.

Anyway, thanks

~~~
srgseg
Thanks, it's on the to-do :)

------
bdcravens
For a free product, the copy on their site feels a bit more "salesy" than I'm
used to for a free product

~~~
pizza
I agree. It was the _How do you make money?_ that made the whole page feel a
bit.. _off_.. for me. I think taking it out would make it less confusing.

~~~
kirubakaran
Not for me. It answered exactly the question I had in mind. I love the effort
they put into the "salesy" page. I don't see why "salesy" is inherently bad.
It sells well, even if it is free.

------
dchichkov
I think that this 95% number is wrong. Likely doesn't take good old shared
memory into consideration...

[http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/google-chrome-memory-
usage-...](http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/google-chrome-memory-usage-good-
and-bad.html)

"Measuring memory

If you're measuring memory in a multi-process application like Google Chrome,
don't forget to take into account shared memory. If you add the size of each
process via the Windows XP task manager, you'll be double counting the shared
memory for each process. If there are a large number of processes, double-
counting can account for 30-40% extra memory size."

------
exterm
Edit: This is not meant to sound discouraging to the developer; I just suspect
he solved the wrong problem.

I find it very strange that a tool exists to reduce chrome's memory footprint
by closing tabs. This does not seem to be the right solution to any problem I
can think of.

If memory consumption is what bugs you, maybe you should use a browser that
consumes less memory per open tab.

If the number of open tabs is what bugs you, then you are probably using tabs
as temporary bookmarks. There should be tools especially for this job. Some
sort of "read-it-later" list comes to mind.

"one-tab" looks like some sort of read-it-later list that is labeled as a
memory saver. Fascinating.

~~~
T-hawk
That's exactly what it is, a read-it-later list. Browsers don't have a good
mechanism for that. Not open tabs, which continually consume memory and CPU
resources until you get around to them. And not bookmarks either, which are
meant for permanent storage, subject to the clunkiness of navigating a folder
structure and explicitly performing every add and delete operation.

So in a sense, One-Tab is indeed a memory saver. Not by really reducing
Chrome's memory usage, but by plugging the workflow gap that induces users to
use Chrome in a way that consumes enormous amounts of memory. (And the selling
tactic sure worked, seeing as there's 200 posts on it here in two hours.)

------
derefr
Oh hey! I built something similar a while ago, for somewhat similar reasons:
"Pause Tabs" ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pause-
tabs/gldljdh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pause-
tabs/gldljdhnehlgmkncfenmgfjblmmcjgce)).

The use-case is _slightly_ different, though--instead of being an en-masse
"dump these things out of my sight" button, I basically wanted a single-page
"bookmark" that works more like the real kind you use in books, where the two
fundamental operations are:

> "Open, remove the bookmark, and restore reading to previous position,
> atomically"; and

> "Save position, create bookmark, and put away for later, atomically".

If you want, though, it can still give you the same effect of "hammer the
button to 'put away' a window's worth of tabs."

On the other hand, the bookmarks Pause Tabs creates [despite just being
regular bookmarks] preserve of your vertical-scroll position on the page,
which is kind of nice for long documents. I wonder why that isn't a "built-in
thing bookmarks are just expected to do", actually.

------
rmk2
I _absolutely_ fail to see the point here. Why should I use this? Is this
again one of these instances where, magically, free RAM is good?

30 tabs opened simultaneously (with AdBlock, Ghostery and Disconnect),
alongside Thunderbird, Emacs (+daemon) and a full DE run up to 1.8GiB of RAM
used on my machine, which is everything but fast, new, or fancy. Consequently,
I still have 2GB of RAM remaining that are not directly needed (and hence used
for caching by the OS).

I'm writing all this from a Core2Duo laptop, so really, when exactly does any
computer bought at the same time (or since) have _actual_ problems of running
out of memory? I have not experienced such problems in _years_ on anything
other than a Raspberry Pi. Is this a problem that really needs solving?

Feel free to point me to use cases where this is essential or useful, for I
cannot see any.

~~~
colomon
Well, yay for you. As I posted in the Firefox thread, when I checked this
morning I had 16 tabs open using 2.6GiB of memory, and that without the using
websites like Facebook and Twitter that I've found to be memory pigs in the
past. I use AdBlock, maybe Ghostery and Disconnect are magic?

In general, my machine has 8GiB of RAM and low-memory thrashing / out-of-
memory errors are pretty much a daily occurrence. They're certainly not all
Chrome's fault, but I don't think it is helping matters any.

~~~
rmk2
My post was in no way meant to be _boasting_ , quite the contrary, it assumes
that my computer is on the lower end of what will be widely used, especially
here on HN.

> In general, my machine has 8GiB of RAM and low-memory thrashing / out-of-
> memory errors are pretty much a daily occurrence. They're certainly not all
> Chrome's fault, but I don't think it is helping matters any.

I suppose the choice of operating systems has to do with this as well, since a
browser can only do so much if the underlying OS handles memory allocation in
a less than ideal way. This at least sounds like it might a problem that is
situated on a much lower level than your browser dealing with multiple tabs.

------
boundlessdreamz
Allow a way to whitelist domains that should not be closed (like gmail)

~~~
srgseg
Thanks for the feedback. At the moment, one way to achieve this is to "pin"
the gmail tab. OneTab will not close any pinned tabs.

------
Newky
From what I understand, this calls out to their servers and they display a
page?

Would it not be more secure and safer to render this on some sort of local
page?

Don't really see the need for this information to go to a third party server.

~~~
srgseg
(OneTab developer here): None of your tabs are sent to a third party server.
It's all stored in HTML5 local storage.

The only way the one-tab servers know about your tabs is if you click to
'share as a web page', which transmits your tabs to our servers to create a
web page you can share with others.

~~~
nodata
Your website talks about which information is _not_ sent to OneTab.

Which information _is_ sent to OneTab?

~~~
srgseg
The OneTab servers are never accessed unless you click the "share as a web
page" button. We don't know what tabs you have open, or what tabs you have put
in your OneTab list.

------
polskibus
Isn't 95% reduction claim a bit too bold? It is widely known that standard
measurement of Google Chrome's memory consumption with task manager is wrong
because it doesn't take data sharing between processes into consideration. How
was the 95% figure produced?

~~~
kenkam
He has 21 tabs opened, by reducing it to 1 tab, he has saved 20/21 lots of
memory, ~~ 95% saved.

Assumptions: each tab uses same memory; no shared memory (or shared memory
equally divided between all tabs), every user has around 20 tabs open given
the first 2 assumptions hold true.

To me, the 95% is a magic number.

------
Serow225
Neat. Could you add some sort of way for the user to choose whether they want
to restore into the current window, instead of a new window? Cheers :)

~~~
mvzink
Yeah, I was wondering about this. Honestly feels like a design flaw. When I
hit "restore all" I expected the tabs to replace the OneTab... tab. Other than
that, and knowing that it's all in HTML5 localStorage, this will be replacing
PanicButton!

------
Flenser
I've only just realised this is built into chrome natively:

Right click on any tab in a window and choose "Bookmark all tabs..." from the
bottom of the menu. Or press CTRL+SHIFT+D.

This has the following advantages over OneTab:

1\. You can add new bookmarks to the list at any time.

2\. Bookmarks can be synced with google sync.

3\. You can name the folder so you know what the list is.

4\. Bookmarks are searchable in the omnibar.

5\. You can open a single bookmark without it being removed from the list. If
you don't want to keep it, just click the star in the address bar and then the
remove link.

6\. When right-clicking a folder there's an option to open all bookmarks in an
incognito window.

I can't believe I've overlooked it for so long! I don't need any session
management extensions now.

------
jbarrow
I really like the functionality of OneTab, as I'm someone who frequently has 3
concurrent Chrome windows, each with dozens of running tabs.

The one thing that's going to prevent me from using this regularly, though, is
that once you reopen a tab, there's no back state. I find that some of the
most valuable information that I can get from a webpage isn't necessarily the
page itself, it's the process leading up to the page.

That being said, this is an absolutely beautiful Chrome extension and I
commend the developers on what they've accomplished.

~~~
bigwilley
I recently found TabMemFree
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabmemfree/pdanboc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabmemfree/pdanbocphccpmidkhloklnlfplehiikb)

It is similar to OneTab but keeps the tab open (with Flavicon and Name) but
just "parks" it after a time period. It saves back states.

As a heavy open tab users (we have a support group I've heard) I like it.
Working with 4 GB of Ram is made much easier!

If you have a tab that you don't want "parked" after 15 minutes (configurable)
then you just pin it. So Gmail and Pandora get pinned. The rest park
themselves and reload on when I select them.

~~~
mohanr
I did try this one for some time before The great suspender
(<https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender/>).

IMO the great suspender is better at solving this problem for me because
(recalling from memory my experience with tabmemfree couple of weeks back):

1\. The great suspender retains a visual snapshot of the page (along with
title, favicon etc) thus helping me jog my memory about what the tab is about.

2\. It uses a internal chrome:// URL to park the suspended tabs instead of
using an external URL (<http://>). I am not saying that the developer of
tabmemfree could be spying on the URLs being parked. But I am just not
comfortable with the idea of parking my tabs using an external http service.

3\. An explicit text format white list rather than relying on pinned tabs
(which makes me lose the tab position, title etc).

4\. Explicit option to suspend a tab or group of tabs (and bring them out of
suspension) - instead of just relying on time-outs to suspend a tab.

------
S_A_P
Maybe Im not a "power user" or something, because I rarely have more than 3-5
tabs open at any given moment, and 2 of those are my email accounts. We have
searchable browser history, and it seems like that would be a horrible
workflow to have anymore than say 10 tabs open at any given time. They get so
small you cant see them and how would you find what you want? ctrl + tab? Im
genuinely curious as to how someone works this way.

~~~
xymostech
I regularly get up to about 30-40 tabs. I'm a spacial thinker, so I can
remember where the content that I want is relative to it's position in the tab
bar (+- about 2 tabs usually), so having the icons disappear doesn't bother
me. I just compulsively ctrl-click things to open them in new tabs, in case I
want both the new content and the old content.

------
mohanr
There are better extensions out there solving this problem. One I use is
<https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender/>

It frees memory by taking a snapshot of the page and loading the image
(instead of the DOM). This frees up a great amount of memory. It also persists
the tab position, title, favicon (which are essential to me in remembering
information about the tab). Clicking (or pressing Enter, F5 ..) on the image
preview loads the page.

You can set tabs to be automatically suspended after a predefined amount of
time. You can set tabs to be restored automatically on focus (unfortunately no
time delay option here). You can white-list domains from auto-suspension.

For Chrome v25 users: The extension is having some stability issues which
causes Chrome to crash
(<https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender/issues/30>). But if you are
using any version before that, it should work fine. It had become an
indispensable tool for a tab hoarder like me. Waiting for the dev to fix the
current issue with Chrome v25.

------
rufugee
Looks great and I would definitely put it to use, but on Ubuntu with Chrome
22.0.1229.94, I get "Installation failed either due to cancelling the dialog
box or because you already have the extension installed" when installing from
your web page. When I try to do it from the web store, I get "There was a
problem adding the item to Chrome. Please refresh the page and try again".

~~~
estebank
Same error happening here along with a Butter bar stating "Manifest file is
invalid." in Mac OS X 10.8.2 and Chrome 25.0.1364.160.

~~~
srgseg
We've been looking at this, apparently this happens when an extension has just
been released and is "propagating between servers".

If the extension install is not working for you, it should start working later
today once Google's webstore servers have updated

~~~
shawabawa3
I had this issue and literally 10 seconds later I tried again and it worked
fine

------
marcamillion
As someone that lives with 40 tabs open in any 1 window at a time, with at
least 2 windows open....THANK YOU.

I love this. I don't get why people are being so negative on this thread. Also
that discussion about the cost of RAM, is pointless. Who cares how much
RAM/Diskspace costs. That doesn't mean we should be inefficient with our
resources, because we can simply buy more for cheap. That's an excuse that
lazy developers use.

That being said, I would love to know a few things about this extension (if
the creators are here):

\- Where is this list stored? On my HDD? In my Gmail Account?

\- I would love to backup the list, so it doesn't get lost. I am accustomed to
using Chrome's history, but that gets wonky from time to time and I have been
in many situations where I expect the full history to be there, but it isn't
for one reason or another.

\- Will my One Tab list be there if I reset my machine? I assume so, but what
if I close my `One Tab` tab?

Other than that...THANK YOU...for this WONDERFUL extension. This will easily
be my most used extension - hands down.

~~~
Flenser
It's stored on your PC in the window.localstorage for that extension. I used
the Extension Gallery and Web Store Inspector to look at the code without
installing the extension:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extension-
gallery-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extension-gallery-and-
web/bbamfloeabgknfklmgbpjcgofcokhpia)

It might be easier just to save them as bookmarks. Right click on any tab in
the tab bar and choose "Bookmark all tabs" or press CTRL+SHIFT+D. Use the
Split Tabs extension to break them up into local groups first:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
split/imjbfepo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
split/imjbfeponcaggdpmoiadjbafihlojbco)

I've talked more about the benefits of using just bookmarks here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5358109>

------
secoif
If this appeals to you, I have 2 words: Tab Wrangler.

As a compulsive tab hoarder, I've been using Tab Wrangler for this same
purpose for over a year and I believe its approach is far superior: it just
closes tabs that you ahven't visited for a period of time. If you haven't been
to a tab in ~20 minutes, likely you don't need it on hand. I can't know when
I'm done with a tab until I've moved onto my next task, which means I'm no
longer thinking about that tab.

Also, you can lock tabs, have a minimum number of tabs (I set mine to 5) and
easily list any auto-closed tabs so you don't lose anything, though I find
myself only needing to look through that list once or twice a week.

Anyway, Tab Wrangler absolutely changed my life.

Not my project, just think it's awesome:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
wrangler/egnjh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
wrangler/egnjhciaieeiiohknchakcodbpgjnchh?hl=en)

------
un1xl0ser
I don't care so much about the memory, but this reminds me of how chrome
doesn't have a way of vertically showing the tabs. know that firefox when I
use it supports that.

I saw support for vertical tabs in Chrome that can be turned on, but I think
that is experimental. The people that suffer from the memory problems are the
people who really just need better tab management features. Maybe this is
something for power-users that just needs to be handled with extensions.

Also being able to suspend and resume sessions better is a good idea, and this
may help with. When coding on a particular thing, I'll have most of the tabs
open that I need. When I get back into it it's just a storm of CMND-T and
searching for the references I was using. Sounds like this could help with
that.

------
ernestipark
Super useful, thanks! I was afraid that this would close my pinned tabs, but
seems like you paid good attention to this detail. A request: it would be nice
to be able to right click and open the one-tab interface/tab without actually
having to save all tabs.

------
Tyr42
Aww, history goes away. That might be a problem...

~~~
przemoc
This and lost input in text-boxes is what it lacks to become useful. Also
localStorage is limited and this limit cannot be raised, so someone with
enormous amount of memory could prove that OneTab is not reliable, contrary to
how it is advertised. To fix that it has to use indexedDB and require
unlimitedStorage. (Well, we still require enough free space on disk, but it's
the same with localStorage.)

Anyone willing to record screencast how OneTab fails at handling million tabs?
:)

------
sbronstein
My big problem with Chrome tabs is that over time, they start consuming all of
my _CPU_ resources and I have to go in and kill a bunch of 'Chrome Renderer'
processes to get the load back down to a reasonable level.

This also happens if Chrome crashes / I quit or force-quit out of Chrome and
then restart. I don't really want it to open however many tabs I had open, I
just want to be able to see what tabs were open. I would be happy with it
creating the tabs with the title at the top but not loading it. Short of that,
One-Tab is a decent way to help with this issue.

------
niggler
Save 99% memory in google chrome by bookmarking all tabs and closing Chrome!

~~~
lttlrck
where did the 1% go?

~~~
niggler
Some long-running hidden chromium process that doesn't seem to die when you
quit or force-quit chrome on mountain lion. You have to go into activity
monitor to kill it. This never happened in Snow Leopard.

~~~
drunkenfly
Could it be that you have "Continue running background apps when Google Chrome
is closed" setting to be on?

~~~
niggler
"This is only applicable to Google Chrome browser on Windows and Linux."
(source:
[https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...](https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1184722))

the mystery continues ...

------
theoutlander
Interesting extension. I think you need to address a couple of things:

1\. Try to maintain state for all the content in the controls. For instance,
if I'm on JSONlint.com with some complex JSON in there, I'd like for that to
be there when I re-open the tab. So, simply storing historic reference and
reloading the pages doesn't add so much value for my use-case.

2\. Can you do the same with other extensions? I have a ton of things running
and it would be nice to disable all on-demand via one-click. My memory
consumption was still over a GB with all the running extensions.

Thanks & Good luck!!

------
whalesalad
Would be nice if this would be semi-integrated natively into Chrome, almost
like the implementation on older Apple devices that can't have as many
concurrent web pages open. On my iPad mini for example... if I am reading a
few pages and switch back to another one I was looking at 30 minutes ago, it
re-loads itself.

So if a tab is dormant for a while, Chrome will throw it away. Then when you
recall it, the next day or whatnot, it will re-load it.

For someone who typically has a hundred tabs open at any given moment, that
would be a pretty cool feature.

------
joshmlewis
I'm quite surprised of the feedback so far with this. It works well for what's
offered. I find myself looking through dribbble or hunting down a problem and
need to have a few reference tabs open on occasion but I don't necessarily
want them open but I'd like a reference if I needed it again. I would suggest
being able to make lists inside the OneTab page and saving those lists as
presets if you can't already. That way I can label certain groups "Design
inspiration for XYZ" and have those tabs directly related.

------
chenster
OneTab doesn't seem to preserve individual tab browsing history. So if I
understand it correctly it really just converts the unpinned tabs to bookmarks
and them close the tabs. Am I correct?

In Chrome, you can right-click any tag and choose "Bookmark All Tabs".
Occasionally, I do that to save open the tabs if I don't have enough time to
read them all. Admittedly, OneTab has a simpler interface and conveniently
closes the tabs for you.

See <http://screencast.com/t/biqAF65Fdd>

------
revorad
Nice idea, but a heads up for anyone trying it out: installing and clicking on
the icon closes all your open tabs _immediately without warning_. Quite a
jarring first user experience.

------
mkolodny
The current implementation doesn't differ much from just closing all of your
tabs and reopening them using 'Recently Closed'.

One way you could keep the one-click-to-open functionality of tabs is to keep
the tabs in a persistent vertical list of favicons along the side of the
screen. One tab could remain open, and clicking another tab, or favicon, could
replace the current tab.

Edit: Here's a mockup: <http://imgur.com/pfYO7xY>. You could have the title
show up next to a tab on hover.

------
dtf
I love the simplicity. At the risk of adding complexity, there's this Chrome
extension I used to love and use all the time called JoinTabs, that
unfortunately started shipping with some nasty malware. It did this very
simple thing of collecting all the tabs in all your open windows and putting
them in one window. Since OneTab only seems to work on the tabs in a single
window, is there any way to combine these useful features?

~~~
MartinodF
I use "Merge Windows"! [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/merge-
windows/adja...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/merge-
windows/adjadgadeebehakpgamlnafmdkegkmph)

------
jsvine
Nice. I built a similar Chrome extension recently:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
bankrupter/pnd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
bankrupter/pndipmgldhbejkehopnbbpjgidkbiimh/)

Open-sourced here: <https://github.com/jsvine/tab-bankrupter>

As the name suggests, it's aimed more at the mental — rather than
computational — weight of tabs.

------
Centigonal
Dossier[1] has been doing this for years now. It's not as pretty, but it can
manage lists and has a bunch of neat features.

I'm no affiliated with whoever makes it (except as a user, I guess) -- but I
did want to bring pre-existing alternatives into the discussion.

[1]
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dossier/hohaaljbjh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dossier/hohaaljbjhjodnncjbeeilfdloeinfbh?hl=en-
US)

------
kmfrk
Just yesterday, I was thinking about something similar for Opera. Opera
supports tab stacks (which are great), but many often go unused for days, so I
thought about implementing a way to convert a tab stack to a simple tab with
an overview of the sites that were open in it.

My main problem with this is that you can't order your tabs into groups - the
extension may not even make a distinction between regular tabs and pinned
tabs.

------
fowlerje
This is a great start.

I wouldn't mind having a side tray or list of temporary bookmarks that I could
easily add to, restore from, or remove. Then I would have 3 or 4 active tabs
and about 15 inactive tabs and could swap between them easily.

I know it is possible with shift + cmd + D, as one commenter pointed out, to
bookmark all tabs temporarily but that would get cumbersome if you were
constantly changing out tabs.

------
dullroar
Install isn't a link but a span, so you can't tell what it's doing/where it's
going by hovering. Hmmm...Feels REALLY spammy, or is it just me?

~~~
srgseg
The install button has to call the chrome.webstore.install API for instant
installation, so if it were a hovered link it would not show anything
particularly descriptive.

------
lftl
While I've switched to a box with ample RAM so that this isn't really a
concern any more, my old habit was to open up the Chrome task manager, and
just kill any tab that I was just holding in place to read later. All the RAM
gets freed up, but the tab is still held in place if I close the window. A
simple refresh when I actually want to look at the tab would bring it back up.

------
Nursie
I want the opposite for Firefox on android - some way to instruct the browser
NOT to unload background tabs because I might have been partway through
entering data in those and just gone off to another tab to check something I
was writing about.

I have 1GB of RAM in my Note and rarely run more than one thing at a time. FF
for android seems to have a really aggressive unload policy.

~~~
Splendor
This is a big problem for me in ChromeOS too.

------
Deezul
Feature Request: The ability to save and re-load tabs as a labeled set. An
array of open tabs is often the result of an intentional workspace. If I could
label a saved OneTab as "iOS Development" and have it launch iOS Dev Center,
JIRA, bitbucket, and various API/documentation, it would make switching from
casual browsing to work mode a breeze.

~~~
xemoka
You're looking for "Session Buddy"[0] available on the Chrome store. This is a
more complex OneTab, I've been using it for quite some time as I'm a tab
abuser (60+ open tabs). It's great for storing and managing sets of tabs.

[0] www.sessionbuddy.com

~~~
Deezul
Wow, thanks for making my day.

------
billpaydici
How about just use Chrome?

1\. bookmark all tabs ⇧⌘D

2\. in the file dialog create a new folder e.g. "foo"

3\. (later) with Bookmarks > foo menu open, select "Open All Bookmarks in New
Window"

Voilà

~~~
joshdotsmith
Nice idea, but for me these are usually temporary bookmarks, and doesn't
handle the garbage collection for me nearly as simply.

Thanks for sharing, though!

------
ccameronmills
I was going to say this was pretty neat but within 30 seconds of actually
using it, it managed to lose a window full of tabs which I'd had open for a
couple days and I can't recall what was in it now so a bit frustrated. I
collapsed up 3 windows into one tab, then did expand all on all 3 and one of
the windows re-opened with only 1 tab.

------
sturmeh
I'd rather waste memory than waste network traffic, re-authenticating and
hitting servers to check for updated data and restarting audio/video streams.

It makes sense if you are using a machine with limited memory or you want to
leave one page open whilst doing something memory intensive, but it by no
means is a 'useful' way to casually browse.

------
Multiplayer
I really like this. It's fast, simple and easier to re-view the pages than
bookmark all tabs. Thanks!

------
ktt
Very similar to this extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
focused/mhdlja...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
focused/mhdljapdjjfoeafbcldiajggppjomeno) (except the permissions)

------
xxpor
Suggestion: could you make the list flow upwards when the user clicks the X to
close a tab? This way the user doesn't have to move the mouse to close
multiple tabs quickly. Basically it's the same behavior as Chrome, just
vertical.

------
NelsonMinar
Nicely presented. I've only tested this a little, but in some cases it appears
that restoring a tab doesn't issue any new HTTP requests to the page server,
maybe subject to cache headers. That's a nice trick, how does it work?

~~~
srgseg
That's probably Chrome obeying the HTTP cache headers for the web site in
question.

------
ttty
It could be an extension that froze a tab: for example right click on a tab,
save the data on disk and saves ram. When you go back it will take a lot of
time.

This extension opens the page again, loading it which leads to bigger time
load.

------
0stanislav
I always try to keep myself using less than 4 tabs in Chromium. Used to work
with several browser windows, tens of tabs each, but found out that this is
just noise, and is detrimental to productivity.

Got the addon.Thanks and good luck!

------
ukapu
Noticed that when I use CRTL+click to open tabs from the list the tab counter
still decrements even though the number of tabs in the list does not decrease.
Now I'm looking at a list of tabs with -3 tabs at the top.

------
porter
Not sure why I can't figure this out, but how can I just place one tab into
the list? When I click on the icon everything gets collapsed and then I have
to open each individual page (or all of them at once).

------
maaaats
I got 16GB+ RAM for a reason: To use it. Nice extension, but I'd rather have
the stuff in memory instead of reading it from disk on need. Haven't happened
in years that I felt the need to free RAM.

~~~
shadowfox
Perhaps this is aimed at the multitudes that don't have 16GB+ of memory?

------
axefrog
Just noticed the "Bring tabs into OneTab" will bring in a detached developer
tools window, which then doesn't work when reactivated as it's loaded as its
own tab, detached from the original page.

------
guidefreitas
Google Chrome should automatically shut down unused tabs and restore them as
needed. Pretty much what this plugin does, but in an automatic way. Nobody
need 50+ fully activated tabs all the time.

------
eisbaw
eisbaw@leno:~$ type chrome_free chrome_free is a function chrome_free () {
kill $(ps -C chrome -o pid,args | grep --color=never 'type=renderer' | grep -v
'extension' | awk '{print $1}') }

------
ontheinternets
Might want to add a more prominent link to the installation

------
soemarko
problem: tab syncing also stop working.

one reason for me keeping chrome is the tab syncing works. Firefox offers
nothing on iOS. safari only works whenever it feels like it.

------
jchung
No idea how this is better than Chrome's built in "Bookmark all tabs..."
feature (Shift + CMD + D) and then just closing whatever you don't need open.

------
acomms
Thank you! As a heavy tab user this is fantastic feature that complements the
way I want to be using my browser. Keep up the great work.

------
alexmr
Very useful. It'd be nice to be able to exclude certain tabs from ever being
closed (like gmail) that I want to keep open.

------
aranw
Hmmm It would be nice if it saved tab history as well, restored and ended up
finding all my history had been lost :/

------
bmurphy1976
Do what I do: save them to Instapaper. Then go back and organize them once a
month but never bother to read them.

------
arrowgunz
If this extension is not made to make money, why not Opensource it so that
others can contribute to it.

or

Is it opensource already?

------
josso
Is this any different from opening the Chrome Task Manager and quitting every
tab? (Memory-wise)

------
est
Chrome used to have an option called --single-process which reduce the RAM
cost to few megs.

------
anuragupadhaya
Even being a marketing gimmick, it is a smart development. Minimal and useful.
I <3 it.

------
notdan
I like the idea, but how is this any different than the "Bookmark all tabs"
feature?

------
serialx
Please add a facebook share button. I would like to share this with my
friends. :)

------
ceejayoz
I'm going to make NoTab, which closes Chrome for a 100% reduction in RAM
usage.

------
itamarb
How about one-comment.com for reducing the clutter from HN comments thread?

------
buremba
what about the current session? think browsers as an os, not just a program.
you spend most of your time in front of it. they deserve more resource than
the other installed programs in your computer.

------
nessus42
Excellent! I love it!

Now when is there going to be a version for Safari?

------
omnray
Its fanny that nobody mention there the TabsOutliner

~~~
omnray
A screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/o8ZvIDH.jpg>

------
nu2ycombinator
I am worried, It knows all the data you are surfing.

------
lorenzfx
so you are saving 95% memory by closing all tabs? I have an even better idea:
let's save 100% memory by hitting that X.

------
senthilnayagam
will this or any other extension work on chrome in mobile or tablets, thats
one place where you cant add memory

------
dschiptsov
Nice way to build a data-set for mining.)

------
daemon13
Can we have the same for Firefox?

I have 2020 open tabs!

~~~
Mahn
May I ask... why?

------
Flenser
Initially I thought this might be an easier way for me to save sessions than
my current session saving solution which doesn't make saving a single window a
one click operation. I could use in conjunction with the split tabs to new
window extension

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
split/imjbfepo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
split/imjbfeponcaggdpmoiadjbafihlojbco)

to get just the tabs I want to save, and then put them in a new list. However
I think I'll stick with Session Buddy

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session-
buddy/edac...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session-
buddy/edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko)

as it allows:

1\. naming of saved sessions (of which I have many). It's list of saved
sessions will be easier scan to find the one I'm interested in.

2\. opening of saved urls without removing them from the saved session. This I
would find infuriating due to the way I use saved sessions as a more powerful
bookmark feature.

Also, if I closed the OneTab tab there didn't appear to be a way to bring it
back without creating a new list.

Some features that I'd like to see in a session saving chrome extension:

1\. Sync to my google account with chrome extension syncing. Sessions Buddy
will hopefully have this in the next release but it's been in development for
over a year...

2\. Multiple saved session lists so I can separate sessions between e.g.
work/private, or "things I want to get back to" and "archived things that
might be useful in future."

3\. Integration with omnibar searching.

1 and 3 Could be done by saving sessions as bookmarks, which is what
FreshStart does

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/freshstart-
cross-b...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/freshstart-cross-
browser/nmidkjogcjnnlfimjcedenagjfacpobb)

but I don't use that extension because of it's confusing UI.

After Edit:

I should have mentioned. The easiest way I've found to limit chrome memory is
to firstly only enable the extensions I use on a day to day basis, and
enable/disable others as needed using Extension Manager

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extensions-
manager...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extensions-manager-aka-
sw/lpleipinonnoibneeejgjnoeekmbopbc)

and then _kill every tab process_ in the chrome task manager after chrome
starts up. I usually have 90-100 tabs and currently have 142 tabs open. My
system would grind to a halt if I didn't do this.

------
ErikRogneby
For the curious:

chrome://memory-redirect/

------
systematical
One love, One tab...

------
galactus
wow, amazingly simple/useful idea! Thanks!

------
twapi
stupid marketing.

