The Great Suspender was once a prime recommendation from tech enthusiasts who wanted to manage their tabs better, but something has seemingly gone foul with the add-on. Google has now removed the extension from the Chrome Web Store, claiming that it can be used to spread malware.
What Happened to The Great Suspender?
The news of The Great Suspender's suspension broke on 9to5Google. As it turns out, the app you may know and love may not be itself anymore. Last year, the extension was sold to a third party who remained anonymous.
After the sale went through, things got a bit fishy when The Great Suspender received an update to version 7.1.8. The update introduced a way for malicious agents to potentially execute code on people's computers without them knowing.
Whether this was a security oversight from the extension's new owners or a deliberate attempt to do damage, we're not sure. Microsoft, however, wasn't taking any chances. When the news broke, Microsoft removed The Great Suspender from its Edge browser, which supports Chrome extensions due to its new Chromium codebase.
Google, however, didn't remove it right away. The new developers of the extension released an update that supposedly removed the security flaw, so Google kept it around. That seems to have been flipped on its head, however, as the extension has now been pulled from the Chrome Web Store for malware-related reasons.
Not only that, but Google has stopped The Great Suspender from working on Chrome even if you downloaded it after the ban. As such, the extension has been completely locked down and unable to do any damage.
Living in a Post-Great-Suspender World
Right now, we don't know if the ban will be temporary or permanent. It's likely that Google will assess whether the new developers uploaded the code as an act of malice or not. If Google suspects foul play, there's a chance the addon will be gone for good.
The problem is, if you loved the extension, there's a good chance you used it to lock away a few important tabs. Unfortunately, because Chrome no longer allows The Great Suspender to run whatsoever, those tabs are seemingly suspended for eternity.
Fortunately, there's a way to break them out of their stasis. Open up Chrome's History page, then search for this string: klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg. This is The Great Suspender's extension ID, and every tab you suspended is tagged by this string. You can then sort through the results and find the websites you want to recover.
That's all well and good, but what about the extension itself? We'll have to wait and see if The Great Suspender ever makes a return. For the time being, the community has published an addon called The Marvellous Suspender on the Chrome Web Store, which uses the same code as its predecessor right before the suspicious code entered the scene.
We're All Left in Suspense... for Now
While we know that Google removed The Great Suspender for malware-related reasons, we're not sure if the removal is temporary or permanent. For the time being, you can recover your lost tabs, download the safer version of the extension, and get back to suspending.
However, now would be a fantastic way to explore other tab management extensions on the Chrome Web Store. There's plenty to choose from, and a lot of the more famous ones have a history clean of malware scares.
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