A lot of times I have tabs on my browser that I do not presently use but I have them open for a later time. I feel like it would be great to implement a feature that allows you to both set a tab to be inactive (to save resources) and make a tab unable to be automatically set to inactive due to idle time (for tabs you deem high priority, like an email tab)
I know I would find this useful and I’m willing to bet that a lot of other users would as well
It could easily be implemented in the right click dropdown menu and uses functions I believe already exist due to the fact that tabs turning inactive due to idle time is already a thing.
There is a setting labelled “Always keep these sites active” which can keep your email tab running, but I agree that a context menu item would be better. brave://settings/?search=always%20keep
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I don’t think a manual activation/deactivation option would be a good idea, for reasons I stated in another thread:
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If you have tabs that you don’t use and don’t want to close, you can prevent them loading at startup with this extension:
I don’t think you get the point, it would work better if it was an in-browser feature as opposed to an extension that only a few people who really want this feature have to deal with. I believe it to be an easy to implement feature as it is literally a functionality that already exists and would help out a lot more people than just the few people that are going to use the extension (same as adblockers, some people would benefit greatly even though they don’t even know about this functionality’s existence).
Also, bringing up an extension to solve a QoL issue is a non-argument, it’s like putting a band-aid on an exploded fire hydrant.
Essentially, what I’m saying is: it’s a small feature that isn’t hard to implement and would benefit a lot of people, even if only slightly.
It wouldn’t benefit anyone, because the automated functionality can handle 7000 tabs. If you need to discard tabs one at a time then it would only be necessary when you have more than 7000 to manage, at which point managing them one at a time is not manageable.
The extension doesn’t do the same thing, it stops tabs loading when you start brave. After that, the automated memory management is fine.
The issue isn’t that it doesn’t handle enough tabs, sometimes you just want to make a tab inactive without having to wait for it, because you know you won’t be using it for a while but will need it later down the line.
Also some of my tabs (that I haven’t used for about a month) are still “active” for some reason. Also also, a lot of times when I close brave and reopen it, all of my tabs are gone, so I have to restore it using ctrl + shift + t which re-activates ALL of my tabs
That’s why I would want a setting to manually deactivate tabs
The extension I linked above will prevent tabs loading at startup, so the ones you’ve not used in months will not be active.
You don’t need to make individual tabs inactive, there is an automatic process that will manage that for you. The best thing to do with a tab you don’t currently need is bookmark it and close it. Using a feature in a way that results in 7000 open tabs is not a good idea, it’s not what the feature was created for.
Literally all that you are doing is providing an alternative that is both not what I want nor what many people want, but also not intuitive for a lot of people that my suggestion would benefit. And for what?
All you’re doing is providing reasons not to do very simple but very useful QoL features, because you have to die on the hill you’re on right now. Gulp up your pride and see that this won’t hurt anyone.
I never advocated for Brave to remove the auto-inactive feature, they can keep it, they can have it on by default for all I care, I just want more freedom to do with my tabs as I please, and I don’t want to go through the hassle of getting an extension when it could VERY SIMPLY be made by the developers using ALREADY EXISTING functionality.
If you’re going to continue defending your point then I see no point in arguing with you further, I wish you all the best.
@ggtpme,
Please go to brave://settings/system and you’ll likely want to set it to the last option so that tabs go inactive after a very short amount of time. Of note can you can add sites to this list that you’d like to “always” be active:
I recognize that this isn’t exactly what you’re describing but it is a start. There is a way to get what you want, however it isn’t ideal. You can visit brave://discards/ and manually deactivate tabs:
The downside here is that these settings do not persist across sessions. So when you close and reopen the browser, you’ll have to perform these actions again.
I know the extension is not what you asked for, but it would address your complaint about having active tabs that are months old. Having a way to modify 7000 tabs by hand is not reasonable, and if you’ve got a manageable number of tabs then being able to inactivate them is unnecessary, because the automatic memory saver works.
I don’t understand why you’re getting so hung up on the 7000 tabs thing or what it has to do with anything. Downloading more extensions makes your online fingerprint more unique and it just means one more third party to share your data with. That is going against Brave’s privacy MO.
It seems like it would be a relatively simple thing to provide an option for users to make tabs inactive by simply right clicking them. I’ve actually encountered a bug just now where none of my tabs ever go inactive anymore no matter how much time passes and I’ve tried rebooting, and changing the settings a few times but still nothing happens. It all started after I plugged in my 4K TV through the HDMI port on my GPU (so this is my desktop we’re talking about now). I don’t know if that’s the exact cause but that’s when it started happening. Having a way to make tabs inactive manually might’ve solved this, but even if I reinstall I’m not sure if it would resolve it either. I want to make my tabs inactive to save on my memory and power usage because I use my PC for other demanding tasks and the less often my fans kicks in the better it is for my components’ longevity not to mention my electricity bill.
I’ve explained adequately why right-clicking 7000 tabs is not good UX, and where the number came from. If you have a bug that prevents tabs being suspended then right-clicking each one might do nothing, so that’s not a reason to have the functionality.
For an extension to be used in fingerprinting it has to inject scripts into web pages or have web-accessible resources. Not having any of the popular ones which do that also contributes to making your browser identifiable.
FWIW I am adding functionality to the extension I linked above that will let users replace the active tab with a low-resource placeholder. The main feature is to schedule a notification to return to a tab, but it can also be used to sort-of-suspend a page.
Could Brave developers at least take a look at what’s causing the bug and try to fix it? It’s become very inconsistent as of late. Sometimes a tab becomes inactive quicker than another even though I haven’t been using either for the same amount of time, sometimes they just don’t go inactive at all.
I don’t want to have to resort to using an extension for a basic functionality, I stand firm on that. Chrome already allows too many permissions for extensions compared to Firefox and I have enough as is. Tor also doesn’t recommend you to install any extensions at all when using it either since it contributes to your browser’s unique fingerprint and it’s just a modified version of Firefox.
As stated before, you can use this solution to manually “deactivate” tabs:
Additionally, just to make sure, can you go to Settings → Appearance → Tabs in Brave and ensure that the Inactive tabs appearance option is toggled “on”? Just want to make sure that it’s not a display issue here:
Yes, dotted circle is already set to appear and I even made the setting to make sure tabs go inactive after the shortest period of time, but as I said it’s sometimes inconsistent in this behavior. Sometimes I have to reboot and what not, then it works like normal until it suddenly doesn’t and then I have to reboot again and it may not even work completely then. It could simply be my TV display that somehow makes Brave think I’m using all the tabs constantly since it didn’t used to happen before then as mentioned. I’m just bringing it to your attention, I can’t force you to look into it of course. It may or may not be isolated or it could be an uncommon bug that was introduced in the last few updates. I simply don’t know since I’m not a dev.
I will keep your other advice in mind in the future, but I still wish you could just right click any tab and force it to go inactive though but whatever.
