How can I get Chrome to stop killing my tabs in the background?
Alternative 1
To stop Chrome from reloading pages when you return to them after they have been in the background:
- Enter the following into your Chrome address bar:
chrome://flags/ - Search for the "Automatic tab discarding" flag
- Set it to "Disabled"
You may also want to set the "Offline Auto-Reload Mode" flag to "Disabled".
Alternative 2
If you don't want to disable Automatic tab discarding for all the tabs, alternatively, you also have the option to discard select tabs manually via chrome://discards.
On that page, if you have automatic tab discarding still enabled, you can click "Toggle" next to any tab to prevent it from being discarded automatically.
Alternative 3
Pinning the tab will also prevent it from being automatically discarded, however, the pinned tab is moved to the far left which may be unacceptable behavior (particularly for those who use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through their first few tabs). Pinned tabs are also smaller than regular tabs.
References:
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/09/tab-discarding
https://www.guidingtech.com/stop-chrome-reloading-tabs-automatically-switching/
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-hidden-chrome-settings-changing/
I was able to go to chrome://discards/ from the link in the comments and toggle a setting on the tab to prevent it from being killed.
