tabs.discard() - Content

Discards one or more tabs.

Some browsers automatically "discard" unused tabs to free memory. Discarded tabs stay visible in the tabstrip. The browser remembers the tab's state and restores it when the user selects the tab. The details of when tabs are and what is discarded are browser-specific.

You can control whether the browser or this API discards a tab by setting its autoDiscardable property to false in {{WebExtAPIRef("tabs.update")}}. This setting prevents the browser from discarding the tab. The tab can then only be discarded with this API.

It's not possible to discard the active tab or a tab whose document contains a beforeunload listener that would display a prompt.

This is an asynchronous function that returns a Promise.

Syntax

js-nolint

let discarding = browser.tabs.discard(
  tabIds          // integer or integer array
)

Parameters

tabIds
- : integer or array of integer. The IDs of the tab or tabs to discard.

Return value

A Promise that will be fulfilled with no arguments when all the specified tabs have been discarded. If any error occurs (for example, invalid tab IDs), the promise will be rejected with an error message.

If the ID of the active tab is passed in, it will not be discarded, but the promise will be fulfilled and any other tabs passed in will be discarded.

Examples

Discard a single tab:

function onDiscarded() {
  console.log(`Discarded`);
}

function onError(error) {
  console.log(`Error: ${error}`);
}

let discarding = browser.tabs.discard(2);
discarding.then(onDiscarded, onError);

Discard multiple tabs:

function onDiscarded() {
  console.log(`Discarded`);
}

function onError(error) {
  console.log(`Error: ${error}`);
}

let discarding = browser.tabs.discard([15, 14, 1]);
discarding.then(onDiscarded, onError);

Browser compatibility

[!NOTE] This API is based on Chromium's chrome.tabs API.