Last week Cody sent me in a tip for an experimental Firefox extension that I just had to try out. It’s called TooManyTabs, and it essentially adds another tab bar to your Firefox window where you can temporarily store some of your existing tabs. To do this all you have to do is hover over a tab, and you’ll see the tab’s icon turn into an up arrow (as seen in the screenshot above). Clicking on that arrow will move the tab to the new temporary bar.
Why would you want to do this? I’ve got a list of features below, but one of the nicest things is that it will free up some of your memory. It does this by unloading the page from the memory that is consumed by Firefox, which means any forms you’ve filled out will be lost once you’ve moved it to the temporary tab bar. To test this out I opened up 25 tabs which ended up consuming 184MB of memory. After moving them all to the more temporary tab bar that was created by the extension it brought the memory usage down to 133MB. Not too bad.
Here are some of the other things that you can use TooManyTabs for:
- Multiple rows for storing up to 50 tabs
- Restore up to 20 recently closed tabs
- Marking tabs in different colors
- Options to customize number of rows
- Option to open tabs adjacent to your selected tab
- Open all tabs of the same row in TooManyTabs
- Pin your most frequently visited tabs onto TooManyTabs and access them easily anytime
- Pinned tabs will stay on the TooManyTabs row unless you unpin them; clicking a pinned tab will open a new instance of the tab
One nice thing that I have noticed is that if Firefox does get restarted the tabs stored by the extension will automatically get restored. So you don’t have to worry about losing them if Firefox closes.
Get TooManyTabs for Firefox
Thanks Cody!
I was going to try this, but a Lifehacker commenter pointed out that the extra tabs are just bookmarks in disguise (which is why you lose form data, etc.). I suppose it is an easy way to shelve some tabs of your session, but if you use the bookmarks toolbar, you could just create a folder for temporary bookmarks, though it’s not as simple as clicking on that little up arrow: you’d have to drag-and-drop, then close the tab, and you would need to manually remove bookmarks from the folder after re-opening them.
Nevertheless, I’m sure that single-click temporary bookmarks are worth the cost of the extra toolbar to some people.
I don’t get it! Why are we spending time and development energy to save 50 Megs. I have three Gigs installed on my very basic machine, and I have never seen it use more than two. Another 50 megs here or there is a non-issue. I suppose there are folks who open dozens of tabs at a time, but I have never used more than five. After that, I just lose track of them, and then when I close I’m greeted by a query as to whether I want to close all tabs or save them. I know I can shut it off, but I prefer the reminder. I always close the browser when I am finished for the time being. I see no point in leaving it open with dozens of tabs. I suppose others do.
But 50 MB? Sheesh….
Until just recently I was using a computer with only 512mb of ram, so 50 would have been a big deal to me. Now I’m in your position of having 4gb of ram, but I’m sure there are plenty of people out there with sub 1gb computers.
Yea exactly. I have 3 machines in my home and the oldest one is a PIII with 392 MB of SD RAM. I use windows 2000 on it and use it as a file server. Saving 50 MB is a huge bonus for me atleast on that machine. Currently i use k-meleon on it as it is much lighter than firefox.
Thanks Ryan, this looks very promising indeed. I AM always running my browser with between 20 and 70 tabs open and always restore my sessions so any help in reducing memory usage is great. However I will have to compare the saving to many of the tweaks I already use some of which I learned about here. I have to wonder if the savings will be worth while. I will report back once I am done testing.
Very nice extension! A couple of days ago I thought it wasn’t for me, but you talked me into trying it anyway
I always had a separate Fx window minimized to tray with tabs I want to keep open permanently (sort of a “to do” window). Now I can do the same, have them closer to me and save CPU cycles and RAM usage! Thanks 
For me, 50 opened tabs at once is like the extinct Alexandria Library. Why would anyone have so many open tabs? Just curious!
Yes, that is pretty much all they are. But at least it can free up some memory by doing this.
I know plenty of people with older computers who this would benefit. My parents, for example, still use a computer running XP and 256MB of memory.
Your sessions should also restore faster since these pages don’t have to be reloaded.
When I’m going through feeds I’ll often open all the articles I want to read in new tabs… which can often amount to over 50 tabs open.
Here’s a little something I have found to be very helpful at maintaining available Memory on a system I’m surprised more folks don’t know about it. But it only works on Windows….
[majorgeeks.com]
Also I know this topic is for Firefox but I have been meaning too ask you why you haven’t reviewed “Team Viewer” a remote desktop utility. That sucker runs around the Vista UAC and Firewall like it isn’t even there….. I love it, freeware for personal use. Makes Crossloop look like a sad Joke. They just released a Beta Version.
[teamviewer.com]
It’s the Bomb…enough said.
Storyteller, “these utilities appear to do useful work, but at best, RAM optimizers have no effect, and at worst, they seriously degrade performance.” Source: Windows guru Mark Russinovich and his article entitled “The Memory-Optimization Hoax, RAM optimizers make false promises” ( [winntmag.com] )
I actually hadn’t seen that app before, but I will definitely have to check it out. I thought Crossloop was pretty nice and simple, and so I can’t wait to see if Team Viewer is as good as you say it is.
As Change pointed out those optimizers aren’t necessarily that great. Windows should be able to utilize your RAM efficiently without needing something like this. The extension is useful because it actually frees up your memory by completely unloading the page, and isn’t just pushed to your hard drive.
It’s good in my experience too. I’ve tried both and I love Team Viewer for its simplicity. Have been helping several clueless family members and it was quite easy for them too
Looking forward to your review 
Well I just swapped hard drives again on my notebook, went from a 320 GB to 500 GBs (119.00 bucks plus free S&H a nine dollar value )so I have plenty of disk space. (Half a terabyte now)
I only utilize about 33% of available disk at any given time and I do this as it increases disk performance with the less data that has to be located you should always remain about 50% free of available hard drive space you’ll notice the performance boost when doing this.
I don’t see how folks can fill a decent sized hard drive unless your not archiving to optical disk like I always do. That Clean Memory tool does a great job at keeping the memory usage in check.
I have 4 GBs of Ram but the BIOS only see like 3200 GBs of it. That’s with the Older BIOS running on my system the new BIOS see less. I think you’ll see a noticeable improvement in system performance with that app (Clean Memory) if you’ll try it out.
That article is dated 2004 so it may have been valid at the time it went to press but things have changed somewhat since then. I love Team Viewer Ryan it is “the best freebie” for Remote administration. I’ll just stick with my free ware Mem manager tool.(I usually have plenty of leftover RAM and Virtual Memory)
It’s cool for a dual boot system it gave Windows7 more space to play in, ha ha ha. I’m really enjoying Windows7….bye folks. (Even with the several minor flaws in it. Still they did a great job overall).
Nothing really changed since 2004. RAM memory is utilized optimally already. These tools only seem to free up memory, but in effect it will make things slower by taking stuff out of your fast RAM memory and putting it in slow HDD memory (or perhaps worse, remove it altogether forcing the data to load fresh next time you need it). The data is kept in the RAM for a reason (fast cache).
In Vista it might even get rid of the preloaded data to improve load times of often used programs, which means that your programs will load slower. Really, if programs need more than you have available, your OS will automatically put the least used data in a slower cache environment and remove unnecessary data from RAM memory.
You seem to have a 32-bit system since less than 4GB of RAM is recognized. You can use the full 4GB if you switch to a 64-bit OS.
My recommendation for remote assistance: Instant Housecall.
You can use the free version here:
[FreeRemoteSupport.com.]
Easy to use, more features, works with Vista UAC. Highly, highly enjoyable program and it’s totally free!
I like to keep around 50% of my hard drives free as well. It’s pretty crazy though how much capacity you can get for your dollar now. I’ve seen 1.5TB drives for $150!