How to hibernate inactive tabs in Firefox with Sleep Mode

in Software on August 14, 2019, 12:20 PM PST

If you're looking to give Firefox a hand in managing system resources, give this extension a try.

The newer iterations of the Firefox web browser do a much better job of memory management than previous releases, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. And when you work with a lot of open tabs, you might start feeling the pinch on your system.

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What can you do to avoid that? You might turn to a third-party extension, called Sleep Mode. Sleep Mode temporarily puts all but your working tab to sleep, freeing up precious resources. Because of this, you'll have more memory available for those resource-intensive tasks and more battery available for your mobile work. When you click on another tab, that tab will be taken out of hibernation, while the previous "woke" tab will go to sleep.

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How do you use this extension? Let me show you.

Installation

The first thing to do is install the tab from the Mozilla Addons site.

Search for Sleep Mode, by matico, and click the Add to Firefox button.
When prompted, click Add and then click OK.

That's all there is to the installation. Once installed, click the Sleep Mode icon and select if you want to ignore pinned tabs (and various Google offerings), and click START. All but your working tab will go to sleep (as indicated by the moon icon in the tab).

To disable Sleep Mode, click the same icon and click DISABLE.

And that's all there is to hibernating tabs in Firefox with the Sleep Mode extension. Give this handy add-on a try and see if it doesn't give your productivity, by way of system resources, a bump.