Firefox will soon download tabs to deal with low memory and reduce crashes

Mozilla enabled an automatic tab download feature in Firefox Nightly on Windows this week, which is designed to improve low memory situations when using the browser.

Tab download work started more than 10 years ago in Firefox, but the feature never got turned on from Mozilla in release versions of the web browser. A new bug was created two years ago and work continued to prepare the feature for release.

Tab download is now part of Firefox Nightly on Windows. Firefox Nightly is currently on version 93, and it looks like the feature will launch in Firefox 93 for Windows when it launches later this year. Mozilla plans to introduce Firefox support on Mac OS X and Linux at a later time.

The main purpose of downloading tabs is to reduce the number of crashes in Firefox caused by low memory. Out of memory crashes frequently occur when memory is low, and downloading tabs reduces the number of crashes by freeing up memory.

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Firefox selects tabs for the download process based on a number of factors, including “last accessed time, memory usage, and other attributes” according to Mozilla. Firefox’s tab selection algorithm tries to exclude pinned tabs, tabs that play media, and tabs that use WebRTC from being downloaded.

Firefox users can open the new internal page about: downloads to check the order in which the tabs will be downloaded if memory reaches certain thresholds. The page has a “download” button to download the highest priority ta file immediately.

The tabs that are downloaded remain visible in the Firefox address bar. Selecting a downloaded tab reloads the content of the tab again.

The Firefox preference browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory determines whether the feature is enabled (TRUE) or disabled (FALSE). Firefox users can modify the function in about: config.

Systems with 8 Gigabytes of RAM or less should take full advantage of the browser’s new tab download feature according to Mozilla.

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The purpose of most of the tab download extensions for Firefox, such as Dormancy, Suspend Background Tabs, BarTab, or Unload Tab, is to free up memory. A side effect of that is that Firefox crashes less often. Firefox’s native tab download feature also frees up memory, but its main purpose is to reduce the number of crashes users experience in low memory situations.

Google introduced tab discard functionality in 2015 in the company’s Chrome web browser and tab freezing in 2019.

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