The Discarding Disruption
To prevent older computers from running out of RAM, Google Chrome introduced a feature called “Memory Saver” (formerly known as Tab Discarding). If you have thirty tabs open and haven’t looked at one for a few hours, Chrome will quietly kill the process in the background. When you finally click back to that tab to read it, the page goes blank and forces a complete refresh. This is infuriating if you were half-way through filling out a long web form, watching a paused video, or reading an article offline, because the reload instantly destroys your progress and requires an active internet connection to get the page back.
How to Disable Memory Saver Globally
If your computer has plenty of RAM (16GB or more) and you prefer your tabs to stay exactly as you left them indefinitely, you can turn off the Memory Saver feature entirely.
1. Open Google Chrome.
2. Click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner of the browser.
3. Select Settings.
4. In the left-hand sidebar, click on Performance.
5. Look at the very top section labelled “Memory.”
6. You will see a toggle switch for Memory Saver.
7. Click the toggle switch to turn it Off.
How to Whitelist Specific Websites
If you have a laptop with limited memory and actually need Chrome to discard tabs to save battery life, but you want to protect one or two crucial sites (like your company’s CRM or a specific data-entry portal), leave Memory Saver turned ON. Instead, look just below the toggle switch for the section labelled Always keep these sites active. Click the Add button, and type in the URL of the website you want to protect (e.g., `www.mycompanyportal.com`). Chrome will now aggressively discard all other background tabs, but will never touch the sites on your whitelist.