Chromium, the open source version of Google Chrome, the antechamber for all upcoming Chrome features, is now boasting an automated system that discards old and unused tabs if system memory runs low.
The concept of silently shutting down a tab is not new, being already present in Chrome and Firefox as extensions, but now it seems to have been deemed useful enough to be integrated into the Chrome browser, and even the Chrome OS.
For now, the "Enable tab discarding" option is present only with the Windows and Mac versions of Chromium, with the Linux edition to soon follow suit.
To enable the feature, users have to access their "chrome://flags" settings panel and look for the "Enable tab discarding" section at the bottom of the page. The quicker, direct shortcut is "chrome://flags/#enable-tab-discarding"
Just hit "Enable" to turn it on, and then access "chrome://discards" If at first it doesn't work, restart the browser. This usually fixes any problems.
This page contains a list of all currently opened tabs, each also featuring a link to their right side that can be used to manually unload the tab from the OS memory.
If a tab has been discarded, the "[Discarded]" flag is shown in front of it. A discarded tab won't be removed from the tab bar, and clicking it will simply reload the page's content.
Discarding unused tabs will save battery life and improve browser performance
According to the official spec, Chrome will automatically discard tabs in the following order: internal pages like new tab page, bookmarks, etc., tabs selected a long time ago, tabs selected recently, tabs playing audio, apps running in a window, pinned tabs, and the currently selected tab.
This feature can prove to be very useful for users that like to open tens or even hundreds of tabs, which will eventually bog down any operating system, and run out your battery on laptops.
It will also help users by automatically closing down memory-hungry tabs or Web pages that run annoying Flash or audio content.
You can quickly download the latest version of Chromium boasting this new feature for Windows and Mac OS X from Softpedia.