RIP to an excellent Chrome extension
People like to joke about Google Chrome eating a lot of RAM, but there is definitely some truth to that, especially if you are a table father. Currently, I have about 40 tabs open and 20 extensions installed, and Windows Task Manager reports that Chrome uses almost 3 GB of RAM. I have a lot of RAM on my computer, so this is not a problem for me, but for those of you who have installed Chrome with 8GB or less of RAM, you may run out of memory for other applications. Fortunately, there are some solutions to this problem. You can close some tabs, but that means you can not easily stop where you left off. Alternatively, you can use an extension like The Great Suspender to suspend tabs and free up memory. If you’re one of the many who liked The Great Suspender extension, we have some bad news: it’s probably malware.
For some people, this is not news. Since November 2020, supporters of the extension have warned that it may contain malicious code. The old maintainer of the extension sold it to an unknown party in June 2020, and users claim that the unknown party quietly dropped some trackers in version 7.1.8 of the extension. Although version 7.1.9 removed the tracker, many users were understandably suspicious of the extension. At the beginning of January this year, several media outlets followed the news, and many, include myself, decided to ditch it. Earlier today, however, Google pulled the plug on the popular Chrome extension, forcibly removing The Great Suspender from people’s Chrome installations and deleting the extension list in the Chrome Web Store.
Chrome’s removal message for The Great Suspender. Credits: Redditor / u / justingolden21
Many users on Reddit and Twitter reported that The Great Suspender had been removed from their computers. Two topics on Reddit / r / Chrome subreddit are full of comments from people complaining about the sudden decision, as the removal resulted in all their suspended tabs being closed. Fortunately, there is a way to repair your suspended tabs, as indicated by Redditor / u / avatar_ENG. Simply open your search history and search for “klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg”. If that does not work, you can try the other options outlined here.
If you’re looking for an alternative to The Great Suspender, the community member recommends TheMageKing – which revealed the malicious changes in November – Tabs Outliner, Auto Tab Discard or Session Buddy. If you enjoy using The Great Suspender, you can also manually compile the latest known secure version of the extension (7.1.6) from the GitHub repo and download it by enabling Chrome developer mode and ‘unpacking extension’ ‘to choose. A preset version of 7.1.6 is available in the Chrome Web Store under the name ‘The Marvelous Suspender’, but we cannot guarantee its safety.