SailfishX browser background tabs unloading too easy

asked 2018-03-26 19:26:24 +0200

hetas gravatar image

updated 2018-03-26 19:39:21 +0200

It seems to me that stock browser unloads background tabs more eagerly in 2.1.4 than before. This used to be a problem with Jolla-phones but I have noticed this with Xperia X only recently.

If I open a second tab and then close that the first tab reloads. Very annoying when you want to continue on the first tab from the place where you left it.

If I restart the phone then it works quite ok for some time but within days at least browser starts to unload background tabs.

Has there been any changes in recent development in the browser that might cause this? Or is something else using my memory so the browser doesn't have enough? Lighthouse shows contactsd using 24% memory all the time which seem like a lot when browser with couple of tabs open only uses 8%.

I think I read somewhere that OOM killer is activated in SailfishX but I couldn't find that info any more. But OOM killer hasn't got anything to do with browser tabs, does it? EDIT2: Found mention of the low memory killer on the release notes.

EDIT: I noticed this comment on github

Current implementation virtualizes backgrounded tabs when low memory notification (warning / critical) is received even if the browser is at foreground.

Does that mean that OOM-killer does affect the browser tab unloading? So I could fiddle with the oom settings like I had to do with Jolla phones to keep the tabs from unloading?

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Comments

3

Yeah, this is also very annoying when you try to fill in a web form with data from a different page. There is no guarantee the tab with the form won't get killed loosing all data as you switch back and forth (or, got forbid, switch to some other tab/tabs).

For this reason I'm more or less forced to use Android Firefox for filling any online forms (webmail, forums, eshops, etc.).

Possible solutions:

  • browser serializes tab state to disk instead of killing it (Android & desktop Firefox can do that seamlessly these days)
  • make it possible to pin tabs & pinned tabs would never be killed
  • guarantee last N (3 ?) tabs will never be killed
MartinK ( 2018-03-26 19:55:56 +0200 )edit

I've managed to lower contactsd memory usage with the help of this post. This helps with the browser tabs also.

hetas ( 2018-04-10 19:16:56 +0200 )edit