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Keep selected tabs alive

  • 2 replies
  • 6 have this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by kupi

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Android firefox has this useful feature of putting tabs into a cache or whatever to save RAM. However, it would be very useful to decide what tabs are put into storage, and especially what tabs NOT to put there.

One example would be: You're listening to music in one tab and you keep browsing in other tabs. This can work for a few minutes but then the music tab is randomly terminated. you even sometimes notice it by a second of lag.

Another example are web pages that dynamically load more content, i.e. 9gag or facebook.when the page is reloaded, it will not reload the entire page but only the initial part, so your position on the page is lost.

A last example is the obvious forum post or blog entry combined with tabbing back and forth to do some research.

Sometimes, firefox can keep quite a few tabs open at the same time, sometimes a tab is killed just by switching to one other open tab and back. It's very annoying and there is no indication or whatever when a tab will be killed so I could adjust my browsing behavior.

I have read you can opt out entirely from this auto-reload, bjt i could imagine this would bloat the app unnecessarily and limit the possibility of miltitasking without the whole app being killed. especially as a person accumulating a two digit number of open tabs in a typical session.


Is there maybe an addon or a setting in about:config to, let's say, at least enforce keeping tabs alive that have audio/video media playing at the time?

Android firefox has this useful feature of putting tabs into a cache or whatever to save RAM. However, it would be very useful to decide what tabs are put into storage, and especially what tabs NOT to put there. One example would be: You're listening to music in one tab and you keep browsing in other tabs. This can work for a few minutes but then the music tab is randomly terminated. you even sometimes notice it by a second of lag. Another example are web pages that dynamically load more content, i.e. 9gag or facebook.when the page is reloaded, it will not reload the entire page but only the initial part, so your position on the page is lost. A last example is the obvious forum post or blog entry combined with tabbing back and forth to do some research. Sometimes, firefox can keep quite a few tabs open at the same time, sometimes a tab is killed just by switching to one other open tab and back. It's very annoying and there is no indication or whatever when a tab will be killed so I could adjust my browsing behavior. I have read you can opt out entirely from this auto-reload, bjt i could imagine this would bloat the app unnecessarily and limit the possibility of miltitasking without the whole app being killed. especially as a person accumulating a two digit number of open tabs in a typical session. Is there maybe an addon or a setting in about:config to, let's say, at least enforce keeping tabs alive that have audio/video media playing at the time?

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This probably is not possible. When we unload tabs it is because the Android OS has sent a message that the program will be forceably terminated if it does not release as much memory as possible immediately. If the tab is not unloaded then Android will terminate Firefox to get resources for the foreground application.

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That I understand. But android FF will also close open tabs while being the primary app. What I was wondering is if there was some sort of mechanism to keep a specified tab alive (that is e.g. playing music) while I browse in other tabs.

I don't want to disable the "auto-reload" feature completely because I guess FF will turn into the RAM eating monster it is under Windows...

Modified by kupi