Name: Drowzy
Author: ml3dev

How it works

Sleeping tabs stop running.

Every open tab keeps its page loaded and its scripts running, even one you last looked at a week ago. Chrome gets heavier as the day goes on, and closing tabs means losing your place. Drowzy puts the tabs you have stopped using to sleep, using Chrome's own discard system.

01 · ACTIVE

You are using it

The tab you are looking at, and anything you recently switched away from, is left alone. Drowzy only counts time since a tab was last active.

02 · IDLE

It sits past your timer

You pick the wait, from one minute to a few hours, or turn the timer off and do it by hand. Pinned tabs, tabs playing audio, whitelisted sites and tabs you keep awake are skipped.

03 · ASLEEP

Chrome unloads it

The page stops running and hands its memory back to Chrome. The tab keeps its place, title and icon in your tab bar. Click it and it reloads.

About memory savings. How much a sleeping tab frees depends on the tab. A heavy web app can hold a lot, a plain article far less, so the total depends on what you have open. The savings figure in Drowzy's stats panel is an estimate, not a measurement. What you can count on: a sleeping tab stops running until you wake it.

Why Drowzy

No placeholder pages. Tabs stay tabs.

Older tab suspenders swap each sleeping tab for a page the extension owns, and rewrite your real address into a chrome-extension:// one. If that extension breaks, gets pulled from the store, or is removed, those tabs can be hard to get back.

Drowzy uses chrome.tabs.discard(), the same mechanism Chrome relies on to free memory itself. Nothing is rewritten and nothing is swapped in.

A sleeping tab is still a Chrome tab
Chrome does the unloading, so the tab never depends on Drowzy to come back. It is there after a browser restart, and if you ever remove Drowzy, your tabs are untouched.
Your real address stays put
The tab keeps its title, icon, URL and back/forward history. Waking it reloads the page, like pressing refresh, so anything the site had not saved yet may need to be typed again.
No fake suspended screens
No redirects, no "this tab is suspended" page, and no chrome-extension:// URLs in your tab bar. Bookmark or copy a sleeping tab and you get the real address.
Wakes with a click
Click the tab and Chrome reloads the page right there. No in-between page, no extra button to press.

Already have Memory Saver?

Your browser saves memory on its own. Drowzy adds the controls.

Chrome and Brave can already unload tabs by themselves, and Drowzy uses the same underlying mechanism. The difference is who decides. Built-in memory saving is automatic and mostly invisible. Drowzy is the control layer on top of it.

Built into the browser

Memory Saver

The browser decides when a tab is unloaded, using its own rules and a few global settings. It runs quietly in the background and asks nothing of you.

Automatic, no setup
Timing chosen by the browser
Site exceptions live in the browser's own settings
Worth keeping on

The control layer

Drowzy

The same unloading, except you decide when tabs sleep and which ones never do, and Drowzy tells you why when one stays awake.

Your own timer, or manual only
Suspend this tab, Suspend Others, Wake All from the popup, a shortcut or the right-click menu
Keep this tab awake for one tab, or a whitelist for a whole site
The reason when a tab is protected, with a link to the setting
Side panel, sessions and stats so you can see what is sleeping and why

You can run both. Drowzy does not switch off your browser's memory saving, and it does not need to.

Features

Everything you can do from the popup.

Set your timer once and let it run, or take over by hand whenever you like. Everything below is a switch or a button in the popup.

Auto-suspend

Tabs you stop using go to sleep after a timer you pick, from one minute to a few hours. Or turn the timer off and sleep tabs only by hand.

Manual control

Suspend Others puts every other tab in the window to sleep with one click. Suspend this tab puts a single tab back to sleep. Wake All brings everything back.

Keep this tab awake

Hold one tab awake for now without whitelisting the whole site. The hold lasts until you allow sleep again, close the tab, or restart the browser.

Whitelist

Sites that should never sleep. Paste an address as it is, or use a pattern like github.com/ml3dev/*, and import or export the list as plain text.

Protected tabs

Pinned tabs and tabs playing audio are protected by default, and each protection is a switch. Turn on form protection and tabs with unsaved input are skipped too.

It tells you why

When a tab will not sleep, Drowzy says which protection is holding it and links to the setting that would change it.

Popup and side panel

A quick look from the toolbar, or pin Drowzy to Chrome's side panel for a full-height view that stays open. Search your open tabs from either one.

Sessions and stats

Save a window's tabs and bring them back later, tab groups included. Stats count how many tabs have slept today and over time.

Close duplicate tabs

One click finds tabs open at the same address and closes the extras.

Shortcuts and right-click

Suspend or wake with a keystroke, or right-click any page. The keys can be changed on Chrome's shortcuts page, and the popup links straight to it.

50+ languages

The whole interface follows your browser language, right-to-left layouts included.

Dark and light

Follows your system theme, or pick one from the header. Your choice is remembered.

See it in action

Settings, sessions and stats.

Your timer and protections, saved windows you can reopen later, and a running count of what has slept. This is the real interface rendered live, not a mockup.

SettingsTimer, protections, and your whitelist

SessionsSave a window, reopen it later

StatsTabs slept, with an estimated total

Private by design

Drowzy never sends your data anywhere.

The extension has no servers, no accounts, no analytics and no crash reporting. Your settings, sessions and stats live in your browser's own storage and are never uploaded, not even to us.

Tab suspenders have a history of being quietly sold and turned into trackers. With Drowzy you can check for yourself: the code is public, every release is built in the open, and there is no server for it to talk to.

No servers No tracking No accounts No telemetry On-device only

Open source

See exactly what it does.

Vanilla JavaScript with no build step, no dependencies, and no node_modules. Every release is built by CI from the tagged commit and published on GitHub with its SHA-256, so you can check that what is on the Web Store matches the source. Bugs and ideas go to the public issue tracker.

MIT licensed No build, no deps SHA-256 verified releases

Read the source Releases and changelog Report a bug

FAQ

Frequently asked questions.

Does Drowzy track me?

No. Drowzy has no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting and no servers to send anything to. There is no account to create. Your settings can follow your Chrome profile through Chrome's own sync, which never passes through Drowzy. The code is public if you want to check for yourself, and the privacy policy lists every permission and what it is for.

Will Drowzy lose my tabs?

No. Sleeping tabs are normal Chrome tabs that Chrome has unloaded, not pages Drowzy owns. They keep their address, title and history, and they reload when you click them. If you ever remove Drowzy, they are still just tabs.

Waking a tab reloads the page, like pressing refresh. If you were halfway through typing something the site had not saved, you may need to type it again. Turn on form protection and Drowzy skips tabs with unsaved input, or use Keep this tab awake for the tab you are working in.

How is this different from Chrome's Memory Saver?

They use the same mechanism, and you can run both. Memory Saver is automatic and decides for you. Drowzy gives you the controls: your own timer, manual suspend and wake, Keep this tab awake, a whitelist, sessions, stats, a side panel, and the reason whenever a tab will not sleep. Drowzy does not turn Memory Saver off.

Why did a tab not suspend?

Usually because a protection is holding it: the tab is pinned, playing audio, on your whitelist, kept awake, still loading, or has unsaved form input while form protection is on. Chrome also cannot unload the tab you are currently looking at. Drowzy shows the reason next to the button and links to the setting that would change it.

Can I keep one tab awake?

Yes. Choose Keep this tab awake in the popup and nothing in Drowzy will sleep that tab until you press Allow sleep, close the tab, or restart the browser. For a whole site, add it to the whitelist instead.

Can I customize the keyboard shortcuts?

Yes. Chrome manages extension shortcuts on its own settings page, which websites are not allowed to link to. Paste this into the address bar, or press Customize under Keyboard shortcuts in the Drowzy popup to get there in one click:

chrome://extensions/shortcuts

Does Drowzy work after a browser restart?

Yes. Your settings, whitelist, sessions and stats are saved in Chrome's storage and come back with the browser. When Chrome restores a window, the tabs you have not looked at yet are put back to sleep shortly after they appear, so a big restored session does not sit awake all day. Keep this tab awake is cleared on restart, since it is meant for right now rather than forever.

Is Drowzy really free?

Yes. Drowzy is free and open source under the MIT license, with no paid tier and no upsell. If it is useful to you, a review on the Web Store or a star on GitHub is the best way to say so.

Put idle tabs to sleep and get your memory back.