Force Chrome to load all tabs even when unselected

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timmmay

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#189110 17-Dec-2015 09:33

I often open a bunch of tabs from one window, but Chrome on Windows only seems to actually load the content when I'm looking at the tabs. I want them to load when I tell them to, so they're ready when I want to read them. It's much slower for me if it only loads tabs when I view them.

Is it possible to tell Chrome to load tabs when I tell it? Firefox does what it's told but I don't like it as much.

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#1452161 17-Dec-2015 10:31

I know what you are talking about - I can see why they do it though - but can also see it can have its downsides.

I had a quick google and I see articles about google extending this behaviour recently:
http://fortune.com/2015/08/27/google-chrome-shuts-down-background-tab-autoplay/

They seem to be trying to reduce the amount of background work/interference the browser is doing - maybe its made it worse for you. Best hope may be a browser extension - through I couldnt find anything.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

timmmay

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#1452192 17-Dec-2015 11:10

That's probably related, not sure it's 100% the same. I couldn't find anything that does what I wanted, I figured someone else might have worked it out or have better Google-Fu.

gzt

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#1452466 17-Dec-2015 18:43

Hi Timmay, I have not used windows for a while. Is this two scenarios ? Ie;
1. Tabs not loading at startup
2. Background tabs not loading until clicked

richms

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#1452472 17-Dec-2015 18:49

Its as annoying as that thing some websites do where the images dont load till you scroll them into view, making scrolling and browsing a painfully slow experiance.

Richard rich.ms

jonathan18

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#1452489 17-Dec-2015 19:21

I'm experiencing the same annoying thing with IOS Chrome (iPad), where all tabs I have opened either error and require manually refreshing or simply don't load until I click on the tab. This didn't happen with Safari and is damn annoying, enough to make me contemplate switching browsers again! Would love a solution to this issue too... (Note:I've also been experiencing it with Chrome on my Windows laptop.)

Jase2985

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#1452514 17-Dec-2015 19:29

Im not sure i understand

when you open pages in new tabs you want to the load straight away?

are you saying at the moment they only load when you click on the tabs?

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#1452582 17-Dec-2015 19:45

I think Firefox had a setting to allow this. Haven't used it in a while though. I am happy it isn't churning away in the background personally. In this day and age loading a webpage is but a split second. Once loaded it stays there.

Lazy is such an ugly word, I prefer to call it selective participation

richms

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#1452597 17-Dec-2015 20:04

I can see the value on a portable machine with limited battery and a metered connection. On a desktop with craploads of ram and DSL, not needed. Tablet when on wifi likewise.

Richard rich.ms

timmmay

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#1452658 17-Dec-2015 21:31

It's the background tab thing. I'll give you a concrete example. When I have a break, I load my three webmail accounts and a couple of other websites. Chrome is already open, so I hit control-T, hit the link on the bookmark bar, hit control T, move on to the next one. I can open six links in less than a second. What seems to happen on one PC is it brings up the icon but doesn't load the full page content. It's worst on email (Fastmail web interface) but other tabs often do it too. When I select the tab it takes half a second to 3 seconds to load the web page.

I think it's Chrome trying to lazy load to reduce memory usage, but it takes my time. It's worse on my work computer (i5 Ultrabook with 8GB of RAM, most free), on my home PC with i7 and 16GB of RAM it doesn't seem to do it as much.

I just want to turn off lazy loading.

Jase2985

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#1452690 17-Dec-2015 21:37

odd

i tried it with a fresh install of Chrome (ie no add ons and haven't touched the settings, jsut added a few bookmarks) and all of them loaded in the background

there must be a way to have them load, and you would think you would be able to customise it so that each bookmark would automatically open in a new tab (or you could change this)

maybe there is an addon to help you with this?

i use firefox primarialy so cant really help much at all

richms

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#1452703 17-Dec-2015 21:56

You can probably middle click the buttons on the bookmark bar instead of the crtl -t carryon.

Richard rich.ms

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gzt

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#1452744 18-Dec-2015 00:07

timmmay: .

Have a real good look in:

chrome://flags/

List is not long. I saw nothing obvious I am on Chrome mobile less features. I did notice some change in behaviour a few months back relating to tabs reloading when clicked ie; the opposite problem.

Also have a look at the two auto-reload options there in case they make a difference.

timmmay

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#1452790 18-Dec-2015 07:12

Now I'm looking at it more carefully the behaviour's pretty random. I just launched ten tabs, some loaded in the background, some didn't until I clicked them. My webmail is the worst, it never does it, but the others seem to mostly load when told to. I wonder if there's some kind of code in the webmail system that prevents it loading when it doesn't get focus, to reduce the load on their web servers?

gzt

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#1452931 18-Dec-2015 12:15

Ok. That sounds like some are failing to load. I think there is a setting that can specify a retry in that instance if it is similar.

Edit: try those flag auto-reload options first

Behodar

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#1452956 18-Dec-2015 12:47

I think that this may be a core WebKit issue as I've been seeing the same behaviour in Safari recently (within the past month or two - since version 9, I think).

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