I contacted Fireshot after seeing three tabs with Fireshot screenshots disappear when I clicked on one of the tabs to remind myself what was in it.
‘Restore closed tab’ got one of the screenshots back, but the other two were gone.
In its reply, Fireshot said the browser sometimes ‘offloads’ tabs.
Not being familiar with that I thought I’d ask here – in what situations does such ‘offloading by the browser’ occur?
Thanks.
Maybe idle long enough, given your “to remind myself what was”
Possibly / Test: In a Brave Browser New Window, go to: brave://settings/content and scroll down . . . all the way to the bottom, where there is a selector switch: Automatically remove permissions from unused sites ← Disable that.
But, that switch might actually not have any influence over / affect upon tabs?
Also review: Brave Browser > Settings > System
Maybe turn ON: Warn me before closing window with multiple tabs
You might have un-intentionally tapped the Close Other Tabs selection?
And, you are using which:
And your Brave Browser version numbers?
Maybe idle long enough, given your “to remind myself what was”
I almost always have many idle tabs and have not seen this happen before or heard of a browser ‘off-loading’ tabs. I’ve experienced system slowdowns and related behavior that were quite possibly related to having too many tabs open, but not tabs disappearing when I clicked on them, no matter how long they had been idle.
Possibly / Test: In a Brave Browser New Window, go to: brave://settings/content and scroll down . . . all the way to the bottom, where there is a selector switch: Automatically remove permissions from unused sites ← Disable that. But, that switch might actually not have any influence over / affect upon tabs?
Not clear to me how that would apply to a tab that just holds a screenshot. All 3 tabs that disappeared, including the one I actually clicked on, contained Fireshot screenshots, not webpages.
Also review: Brave Browser > Settings > System. Maybe turn ON: Warn me before closing window with multiple tabs
Already selected. The window didn’t close, just tabs.
You might have un-intentionally tapped the Close Other Tabs selection?
That requires a right-click. I clicked normally on a single tab to open it. Even if something weird happened with that tab, I don’t know why that would have had any effect on two other tabs in the window. There also were other tabs in the same window. Only the tabs holding the screenshots disappeared. That was why I contacted Fireshot about what had happened.
Other notes:
• This was in a standard window.
• Brave version , , , old, but still works.
Thanks.
@mattches Are there any situations in which Brave ‘offloads’ tabs (i.e., when there have been no actions by the user to close the tabs)?
The foregoing here describes loss of three tabs when a tab was clicked on (to open it).
All three tabs contained Fireshot screenshots and disappeared simultaneously.
‘Reopen closed tab’ was able to salvage one tab but no others.
Other open tabs in the same window weren’t affected.
Thanks.
Brave v. 1.69.168 Chromium: 128.0.6613.138 (Official Build) (x86_64)
macOS Catalina (v. 10.15.7)
There are a variety of potential factors here but generally speaking, tabs are offloaded when certain conditions are met – namely when too much memory is being used and it needs to be freed. The frequency that your tabs get discarded also depends on several factors, such as how much memory your system has, whether or not you have the memory saver option enabled, among other things. The browser will typically try to offload tabs in a way that is least impactful to the user directly, so it will start discarding tabs that are that are not active, not being used, not pinned, no mic/camera detected, etc.
Thanks @Mattches. It looks like I’ve hit another anomaly, though.
– Why doesn’t Chrome do this [i.e., discard] on Mac… ?
Those machines swap memory out to disk when they get low on resources.
COMMENT: According to this I should not have experienced ‘tab discard’ on a Mac.
– “The tab discarder only drops one tab at a time“.
COMMENT: In the case I experienced, three tabs disappeared simultaneously (immediately when I clicked on one to open it).
“Chromium browsers already have a tab suspension system built in called discarding which you can view at brave://discards (or in Chrome, chrome://discards).”
brave://discards
@289wk Thanks but what am I looking for there?
I don’t see anything related to ‘discards’.
(Even if I did, from the look of it I doubt I would understand it.)
The short of a response that I received from an AI service online: A tab might lose the substance of what you see, and basically be discarded as an unworkable illusion. (Something like that.)
Chrome does do this on macOS (as well as other OS). Whatever conditions caused this to occur to those tabs in Brave could happen in Chrome as well. Just because you haven’t seen the exact situation occur there doesn’t mean it won’t.
The brave://discards page allows you to see all tab processes currently running, whether they’re loaded, when they were last active, the reason they’re not offloading, etc. You can also manually offload/reload those tabs from this page.
To ensure this doesn’t happen again (if that is your goal) I would recommend toggling the Memory saver (in Brave, Settings --> System --> Memory saver) “off”, which will prevent the browser from freeing up the memory any inactive tabs are using (until they’re loaded/activated again).
Lastly, I cannot speak for exactly why this occurred with the screenshots you had as opened tabs using the Fireshot extension, but I suspect it has something to do with how the extension operates rather than how Brave operates. If you keep memory saver on, would recommend simply ensuring that you save the screenshots you take rather than leaving them open for too long.
Thanks, that does seem a possible explanation. I’ve noted in the past that Fireshot doesn’t preserve screenshots indefinitely. I just haven’t had tabs they were in disappear when I’ve clicked on them to open them, even when I’ve found that the screenshots were no longer displayed.
Memory saver was already off as default. But another possibility may be that memory usage was actually greater than Activity Monitor suggested in its graphic display (the green bar). The latter indicated somewhat greater usage than normal but not a lot.
However, swaps (which are rare in my experience and usually accompanied by degraded performance) were occurring, and that would seem to indicate that memory was in fact being stressed.
Because performance didn’t appear to be affected I didn’t get concerned about the swaps initially. After the tabs disappeared I thought otherwise and restarted, primarily because of the swaps.
Anyway, thanks, I’ll follow the advice in your last paragraph to save the screenshots.
