u/DingusKahn666

Been working on my first chrome extension - Slumber!

It's a tab suspender built to fill the hole The Great Suspender left when it went down. The goal was to create a new alternative with minimal permissions and minimal fluff. Do a simple thing well, without selling my data or slamming ads in my face...

How it works: idle tabs get replaced by a lightweight sleeping page that holds the title, favicon, and original URL. No memory, no CPU, until you click or press a key to wake it. Info on what happens on wake in the README.

Permissions: tabs, storage, alarms — nothing else. One host permission for my own license validation endpoint, which only fires on activation or browser startup. Never touches your browsing. Tab URLs and metadata never leave your device.

Free tier handles up to 10 suspended tabs. Pro ($4.99 one-time, no subscription) removes the limit and adds:

- Bulk select and suspend

- Domain whitelist

- Cross-device settings sync via Chrome Sync

Built on Manifest V3 throughout, no remote code execution, fully open source.

I've got a couple things on the roadmap I'd love feedback on — suspension scheduling (e.g. only suspend tabs during work hours) and per-tab rules (pin a tab to never-suspend, or force-suspend a specific one regardless of domain). If either of those sounds useful or useless to you, genuinely want to know.

Chrome Web Store link and GitHub in the comments. Solo dev, honest feedback welcome.

If you were one of the ~2 million people using The Great Suspender when it got pulled from the Web Store in 2021 (after the new owners shipped an update containing malware, of all things), you might know the feeling of suddenly not trusting any of the replacements that popped up. Most of them request host access and a bunch of permissions that have nothing to do with suspending tabs.

So I built my own. It's called Slumber and It does what it says: when a tab has been sitting idle, it replaces it with a lightweight sleeping page that holds onto the title, favicon, and URL. Tab uses zero memory and CPU until you click it or press a key to wake it. That's the core loop.

Permissions are: tabs, storage, alarms. Host permission is a single domain — my own license validation endpoint, and it only fires on activation or browser start, never during browsing. The whole codebase is on GitHub, nothing to hide.

There's a free tier (up to 10 suspended tabs) and a Pro tier ($4.99, one-time, no subscription) that removes the limit and adds bulk suspend, domain whitelisting, and cross-device settings sync.

I'm not trying to build a company or flip this, I just got tired of the enshittification cycle where useful small tools get bought, loaded with garbage, and handed back broken. This is MIT licensed and I plan to keep maintaining it. I have a ko-fi if you want to support future projects as I'd like to keep doing this in my free time, but genuinely — no pressure.

Happy to answer questions about how it works, why I made specific technical choices, or anything else. Constructive criticism very welcome, especially from anyone who's used tab suspenders before and has opinions.

Links in the comments

cross posted from r/SideProject if that matters