Try These Alternatives to the Great Lift Extension
I’ve been a fan of The Great Suspender expansion for many years. Even as Google added new features to its Chrome browser to reduce the resources that eaten up browser tabs, I still trusted The Great Suspender to “deactivate” them for me to reduce the load on my system. But The Great Suspender can no longer be trusted – so much so that Google removed it from the Chrome Web Store in February 2021 as “malware.”
Before we jump into the alternatives you can use instead of this once-useful extension, Dr. Colin McMillen, Lead Developer at SemiColin Games, shed some light on the nefarious new parts of the extension a month before it was removed:
Here’s a longer story: The Great Suspender has a new maintainer (formerly Dean Oemcke) and this unknown entity has dropped several hidden updates for new builds of the extension, allowing it to connect to various third-party servers and execute code. The extension suddenly started asking for new permissions as well, such as the all-encompassing ability to tinker with your browser’s web requests. As TheMageKing wrote on Github last November:
“This allows the extension to do whatever it pleases, including ad insertion, blocking sites, forced redirects … This change was supposedly made to enable new screenshot features, but it was unclear.”
They continued:
“On Nov 6, @lucasdf discovered a smoking cannon that a new maintainer is malicious. While OpenWebAnalytics is real software, it does not provide files that are executed by the extension. They are hosted on an unrelated site owebanalytics.com, which turns out to be highly suspicious. This site is one month old and is clearly designed to appear innocent, hosted on a public web host, and has a seemingly innocent home page from the CentOS project. However, the site does not contain any real information other than tracking scripts, and is only in the context of this extension. Most importantly, minified javascript is significantly different from the one distributed by the OWA project. “
While there is an innocent explanation for this, I can no longer say that it is the most likely. Using the Chrome Web Store version of this extension without disabling tracking will execute code from an untrusted third party on your computer, with the ability to modify any and all websites you see. The fact that disabling tracking still works is irrelevant given the fact that most of the 2 million users of this extension don’t even know this option even exists. The fact that the code is not obvious malware makes no sense in light of the fact that it can be changed without notice and that it is minified (not human readable). “
The mysterious way the new maintainers of the extension handled the whole situation – and their complete silence on this ( and everything else lately ) – made me a little nervous that this situation could happen again, so I abandoned the add-on in all my browsers. I recommend that you do the same, even if it is available on other expansion stores , and try these alternatives.
Better Choice Than The Great Suspender For Your Browser
Firstly, before you try are any alternatives, make sure that you are using The Great Suspender, to “unlock” all open tabs before removing the extension from your browser. And once you’ve done that, it’s time to review those tabs and convert them to bookmarks as much as possible. An organized browser is a happy browser.
After removing The Great Suspender, don’t look for alternatives in the Chrome Web Store. It seems like a lot of people are launching their own options right now, but how trustworthy are they? I would stick with some of the alternatives people have already used, and presumably validation.
I recommended checking out this plug, The Great Suspender, which eliminates tracking entirely. It’s unclear if this option will be supported in the future, given the removal of The Great Suspender from the Chrome Web Store, but it should work for a while.
But do you need a Great Lift at all? As I mentioned, your modern browser is probably already doing a pretty good job of managing resources for inactive tabs. For example, if you are using Chrome, Tab Freeze is already built into your default browser. After five minutes, the browser frees up memory used by tabs you have opened but are not using.
If you need more help, you have other options to reduce the number of open tabs and free up your valuable system resources. I’m a big fan of OneTab and Tabs the Outliner , which discharged all of your open tabs on one easy-to-navigate screen (or sidebar). There are other extensions out there that limit the number of tabs you can open – a great way to conserve resources and curb sprawl. And if you only want a replacement for The Great Suspender, there are other extensions that work in a similar way.
Whatever you choose, it’s time to officially say goodbye to The Great Suspender. He has served us well for years, butno king rules forever .
Update 02/04/21: We have updated this article to reflect the latest news on The Great Suspender removal from the Chrome Web Store.