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I use lots of tabs, and several windows. I also have 4-6 Pinned tabs.

Because of this, I have "Low Power Mode" turned on, from the Tools menu. The way it works is that my Pinned tab are never suspended, and all other tabs get suspended some time after I finish using them.

This does almost exactly what I want, but not quite. I often have the situation where I'm working across a few Windows, and using the content of the visible tab in several windows. And I find that the visible tab in a non-active window gets suspended after a while. Then I lose my place on the page, or the content of a form I'm filling in, or something like that.

I could choose to Pin these tabs, but that doesn't really fit the workflow I want to have.

What I would like is that the visible tab of each Window is never suspended, unless I manually choose to suspend it from the context menu.

This feature would allow me to work with the content of several windows at once, while still enjoying the other benefits of Low Power Mode, to allow me to have the large number of tabs I want.

    SteveA changed the title to Visible tab should not automatically suspend .

      Example

      I was half-way through reading a long article on Medium when I remembered I wanted to write this feature request. So I opened a new window, and went to this forum to write the above feature request.

      After I finished, I went back to the Window with the article. Just as I focused the window, it kind of reloaded and set me at the top of the article. Now I have to find my place again to continue reading.

      I've had the same thing happen, except where I'm filling in a form and I need to check some information from another site. So I open a new window to get the other information, and when I get back the page is refreshed and the form has lost what I was writing.

      Workarounds:

      • I could turn off Low Power Mode
      • I could pin the tab with the Form in before I do the research

      I don't want to do these workarounds because

      • An advantage of Orion for me is to be able to use lots of tabs in Low Power Mode.
      • I don't want to Pin something that is as transient as filling in a form often is. In many cases it's some kind of transactional process, and I have no need for the site, or the tab it's on, once I have completed the form.

      If the visible tab of a window does not get supended in Low Power Mode, that feels natural to me (it's visible and active, so makes sense it doesn't get suspended.

      A refinement might be that if a window is minimized then the visible tab of the window can be suspended. But I don't think the extra complexity of that is worth having -- there's the risk that the mental model of what's going on becomes more complicated.

        Another observation: if I use Orion not in full screen, but with several windows visible or partially visible, I can see when a tab gets suspended after 2 minutes. This seems odd to me. I would take "it's visible" to be a clue that I still care about it, and it shouldn't be suspended.

          21 days later

          I use low power mode on desktop to save ram when many tabs are open.

          However, I also have multiple monitors and like to have multiple orion windows open at once. (E.g. One shows socials, the other is used for web development) Currently, when I have focus the second window, the first one suspends the active and still fully visible tab.

          I don't think it's a ever intended for the active tab in a fully visible window to suspend. It even does that when the window is active in full screen. I don't believe anyone ever wanted an active full screen tab to suspend.

          The proposed change would make low power mode viable to use on multi monitor or even just multi window setups.

          • Vlad replied to this.
            2 months later

            Vlad
            Steps to reproduce:

            • Have multiple Orion windows open that are both fully visible at the same time (On multiple monitors in my case, but that's not required)
            • Activate Low power mode
            • Work for a few minutes in one of the windows

            Expectation/Wish: A fully visible orion tab should not suspend. At the very least, when a window is actively in fullscreen/split-screen, it should not suspend its active tab.

            Reality: Any orion window seems to suspend the active tab when not in focus, regardless of visibility.

            Here we see an orion window on the left that has suspended, despite being in split screen.

                3 months later

                +1 for this

                Low Power Mode is basically unusable for anyone using multiple Orion windows (either on a single screen or spread across multiple monitors), since it immediately suspends the active tab in non-focused Orion windows.

                Example use case:

                • I open an article in a dedicated Orion window on my monitor and then proceed to start making notes in Google Docs in another Orion window on my laptop screen. When Low Power Mode is on, the article webpage is suspended when I start making notes, thus forcing me to turn off Low Power Mode or use another browser for one of the tasks.

                What I think would be the ideal behaviour:

                • Orion should not suspend the active tab of a window (or atleast provide an option to not do so) even when the window goes out of focus.
                  Merged 7 posts from Don't suspend the active tab in other open windows (low-power).
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