I understand that Google doesn’t really want features like this in Chrome, but you would imagine over 2 million people using something suggests it would be a fairly popular feature. Over 2 million people installed this extension. The extension’s developer likely never predicted how popular it would grow. The Great Suspender was a massive success. At the click of a button, it would re-load and let me continue where I left off. So if I opened a website and didn’t come back to that tab for 30 seconds, it would stop eating resources. The Great Suspender is a Chrome extension which lets you set a certain period of time, after which Chrome tabs would be paused. What is The Great Suspender? Why did it go rogue? It’s all a fairly typical tech story to be honest. Story time: The Life And Times Of The Great Suspender And yes, I do realise my leaving open 30 tabs at a time is not really Google’s problem. Thankfully, there was a solution to shut down unused tabs and save some of that memory. It’s the necessary evil that won’t go away. Whether it be for work or some application that’s built specifically for Chrome. The biggest reason is that Chrome is a hungry hippo when it comes to my laptop’s resources.īut I still have to use Chrome. From just not liking Google very much (well, beyond the Pixel 5) to privacy concerns, there are lots of reasons I try to steer clear of Chrome. I’ve also tried to use Firefox or Brave browser more in the past. I’ve swapped over to using Safari for most of my browsing these days. Unfortunately, The Great Suspender ended up in the wrong hands and was filled with malware, but can you still use this Chrome extension safely? Chrome Is A Hungry Hippo Turning to extensions like The Great Suspender meant you could control how long tabs claimed these resources. Some alternatives to The Great Suspender, as recommended by XDA Developers community member TheMageKing, include: Tabs Outliner, Auto Tab Discard, or Session Buddy.If you’re a Chrome browser user, you may have noticed it likes to slow down your laptop with massive consumption of resources. You can recover your suspended tabs by opening up your search history and searching for 'klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg.' If that doesn't work, you can try the other options outlined in this GitHub post. Earlier today, however, Google pulled the plug entirely on the popular Chrome extension, forcibly removing The Great Suspender from people's Chrome installations and removing the extension's listing on the Chrome Web Store. Then in early January of this year, multiple media outlets picked up on the news, and many, including myself, decided to ditch it. Although version 7.1.9 removed the tracker, many users were understandably suspicious of the extension.

The old maintainer of the extension sold it to an unknown party in June of 2020, and users alleged that the unknown party quietly slipped some trackers into version 7.1.8 of the extension. Since November of 2020, close followers of the extension have warned that it may be running malicious code. Mishaal Rahman writes via XDA Developers: For some people, this isn't news. It would then allow you to return to the tab and reload back to where you were. Google has blocked The Great Suspender extension from the Chrome store 'because it contains malware.' The extension was very popular for users running Chrome with 8GB or less of RAM, as it would automatically suspend tabs you hadn't used in a while, freeing up precious memory and CPU power.

Great tab suspender extension