How to Disable Automatic Tab Discarding for Specific Websites in Google Chrome

What is Tab Discarding (Memory Saver)?

Google Chrome is notorious for consuming massive amounts of RAM. To combat this, Chrome recently introduced a feature called Memory Saver (technically known as automatic tab discarding). When this feature is active, Chrome silently pauses or “discards” background tabs that you haven’t clicked on in a while. When you click back to that tab, the browser rapidly reloads the page. While excellent for system performance, this feature can be disastrous if you are working on a complex web form that doesn’t auto-save, a live financial dashboard, or an active browser-based chat application. If Memory Saver discards the tab, you lose all unsaved progress and active connections on that page.

How to Whitelist Specific Websites

You do not need to turn off Memory Saver completely to fix this issue. Google Chrome allows you to create a whitelist of critical websites that the browser is strictly forbidden from discarding, no matter how much RAM it is using.

1. Open Google Chrome.
2. Click the three vertical dots in the top right corner of the window.
3. Select Settings from the dropdown menu.
4. In the left-hand sidebar, click on Performance.
5. Ensure the toggle for Memory Saver is turned On.
6. Just below the toggle, you will see a section labeled Always keep these sites active. Click the Add button next to it.

Adding Sites to the Exception List

When the Add dialog box appears, you have to type the URL in a specific way to ensure the whitelist catches every page on that domain.

1. To prevent an entire website from ever sleeping, type the domain name. Do not type https://www. in front of it.
2. Instead, type the domain like this: example.com (e.g., salesforce.com or slack.com).
3. If you want to be incredibly thorough and catch all subdomains (like mail.google.com and drive.google.com), use a wildcard asterisk: [*.]google.com.
4. Click the blue Add button to save the exception.

Once added to this list, Chrome will never suspend or discard tabs from those specific websites, ensuring your unsaved data and live connections remain active in the background indefinitely.