this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Your OS can't decide when a tab is inactive though, given that they can run code, play media, etc. at arbitrary times.
Firefox can't either, because pretty much any page today will have JavaScript running.
The only way it works is to force tabs that haven't been opened in some time to unload regardless of activity... but that's something that the vast majority of users would not appreciate. For power users there are a ton of "tab unloader" add-ons that do this.
maybe @Eggymatrix ment swapping.
The OS tracks which memory-pages are used least and will swap them out when active programs need more ram than available.