Automatically discards all tabs at startup, before they load, reducing memory footprint and unnecessary bandwidth usage.
Users
1,000
0 in 30 days
Rating
4.4 / 5
unchanged in 30 days
Ratings
32
0 in 30 days
Store rank
#24K
#20K among extensions
Version
0.6
updated 17 Oct 2025
Users
monthly, 3 years
Latest, 16 Oct 2026:1,000 usersMove the mouse over the chart for any month
Ratings count
monthly, 3 years
Latest, 16 Oct 2026:32 ratingsMove the mouse over the chart for any month
The Chrome Web Store rounds user counts down to the leading digit, so the user line moves in steps. The ratings count is exact and is the better signal of real adoption.
About Sloth
An open-source and light-weight chrome / chromium extension which ensures that tabs are lazily loaded.
Source code: https://github.com/hrj/sloth
Requires Chrome 54+.
## How it works
This plugin uses the discard API available since Chrome 54. All tabs except new tabs or "special" tabs are discarded. Discarded tabs are visible in the tab bar, but not loaded from the network nor kept in memory.
If a window doesn't have a new tab, it is created and activated. This prevents any tab from loading during startup, unless you explicitly select it.
Special tabs are those with chrome:// URLs, for example.
Note: Where there are hundreds of tabs open in the session, a couple of them sneak through and become active. This limitation is due to the design of the browser. See https://github.com/hrj/sloth/issues/1.
## History / Credits
I found an extension called Native Lazy Tabs here. It was distributed under the GPL license. I adapted it and added the "new tab" feature.
The icon is by Jaime Serra, distributed under the CC license.