Pinned tabs is a feature in Firefox browser that allows users to keep tabs opened even after exiting the browser. This way, the browser automatically loads any pinned tabs every time the browser is opened for a new session.
You may however prefer to load the pinned tabs only after you have switched to them. This is what I mean by lazy loading the tabs.
The benefit of doing this is that it makes the browser more responsive at startup and reserves Firefox’s memory usage (i.e RAM) for tabs that you are actually browsing, which in turn saves memory for the OS and other apps to use.
Firefox doesn’t provide an option in the settings to lazy load tabs, however, it can be enabled in the hidden advanced configuration preferences as follows:
- In the address bar type
about:configand press enter. - Accept the warning if it’s your first time using the settings.
- Search for
browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand - Double-click the option to toggle it to True.
That’s it! Pinned tabs will now only load after you switch to them. To return to the default behaviour, just repeat the same steps as above and toggle the option back to False.
