No-Tabs-Auto-Discard

SUMMARY

Not all domains or web applications benefit from Chrome's tabs auto-discarding feature, in an enterprise context many of those are state-rich, always connected mission critical applications (e.g. CTI applications, monitoring applications, etc.) which can be negatively impacted by such Chrome feature.

This extension has been developed to deal with Chrome tabs auto-discarding feature by providing a way to configure its behaviour over the tabs of a Chrome instance.

The extension monitors your tabs and can be configured to:

- turn off the extension (Chrome default behaviour)
- disable auto-discarding on all tabs (already opened and new tabs)
- disable auto-discard for specific domains (already opened and new tabs)

The extension's configuration can be provided in two ways (in order of precedence):

- by Chrome Policies (for enterprise Administrator/Users distributed via Windows Group Policy)
- by local configuration file

Configuration Parameters
------------------------------------

This extension can be configured with this two parameters :

- DiscardDisabledMode

This mandatory parameter controls the extension behaviour:

- EXTENSION_DISABLED
Disable the extension

- DISABLE_FOR_ALL_TABS (default extension mode)
Disable auto-discard for all tabs

- DISABLE_ONLY_FOR_DOMAINS
Disable auto-discard for specific domains (FQDN, e.g. medium.com, www.google.com)

- DiscardDisabledDomains

This optional parameter is specific for DiscardDisabledMode=DISABLE_ONLY_FOR_DOMAINS and contains the list of domains for which to disable auto-discarding:

- e.g. [ "medium.com", "www.google.com"]

If DiscardDisabledMode=DISABLE_ONLY_FOR_DOMAINS but the list is empty, the extension will behave like DiscardDisabledMode=DISABLE_FOR_ALL_TABS

Configuration Providers
------------------------------------

- Chrome Policies (for enterprise Administrator/Users distributed via Windows Group Policy)

The extension configuration can be provided machine-wide or for specific users by applying enterprise policies or GPO to the device registry under the following keys:

- Machine-Wide
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\3rdparty\extensions\ndpjhokgnpdcldkklhhklkgabnjehfap\policy

- Specific User
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\3rdparty\extensions\ndpjhokgnpdcldkklhhklkgabnjehfap\policy

Depending on your choice, under the key create the two configuration parameters:

- DiscardDisabledMode (string/REG_SZ)
- DiscardDisabledDomains (string/REG_SZ)

IMPORTANT!!! Chrome Policies have precedence over the local configuration file.

- Local configuration file

The extension can be also configured by its local configuration file (config.json), located under the extension's installation folder (e.g. on Windows) :

- C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions\ndpjhokgnpdcldkklhhklkgabnjehfap\\config.json

The configuration file has this structure (the json below shows the default configuration) :

{
"DiscardDisabledMode":"DISABLE_FOR_ALL_TABS",
"DiscardDisabledDomains":[]
}

- Configuration Refresh
----------------------------------

The extension's configuration is refreshed:

- manually
- by clicking the "Refresh Configuration" button on the extension popup

- automatically by the extension:
- when Chrome starts up
- every 60 minutes
- when the device is locked or screensaver is active for more than 2 minutes

The latest version of No-Tabs-Auto-Discard is available on the Chrome web and is currently being used by 4,000 active users. The initial version was launched on 2022-05-22.

HOW TO INSTALL No-Tabs-Auto-Discard FROM A CRX FILE

1. Download No-Tabs-Auto-Discard CRX file
2. NOTE: Sometimes the browser may block downloading / installing CRX file from outside the Chrome Web Store. If so, you may need to download the ZIP file instead
3. In the URL bar, go to chrome://extensions
4. Enable Developer mode

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