Never miss a moment of your video again.
PauseSpring automatically pauses your videos when you switch tabs, jump to another app, or start typing — and plays them again the moment you come back. Made for Firefox and Zen Browser.
- 📺 You switch tabs mid-video → it pauses. You come back → it resumes. Magic.
- 💬 You start typing a reply or comment → it pauses so you don't miss anything. Stop typing → it resumes in half a second.
- 🛑 Videos you paused yourself stay paused. PauseSpring only resumes what it paused — never overrides you.
- 🎬 Works everywhere you watch — YouTube, Twitch, Netflix, and any other site with video or audio.
- 🔒 Private by design — no accounts, no tracking, nothing leaves your browser.
Firefox / Zen Browser:
- Download the latest
.zipfrom Releases (coming soon — or install temporarily below) - Temporary install: open
about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox→ Load Temporary Add-on… → pickmanifest.json - Pin the 🌱 icon to your toolbar — done!
Click the 🌱 toolbar icon. That's it — it works out of the box with sensible defaults:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Enable | Master on/off switch |
| Pause when: Tab + Window | Pause when switching tabs or apps (recommended) |
| Pause when: Tab only | Pause only when switching tabs |
| Pause when: Window only | Pause only when leaving the browser window |
| Auto-resume on return | Replay when you come back (ON by default) |
| Pause when I type | Pause while you're typing in search boxes, comments, chat (OFF by default — turn it on if you want it) |
Does it work on YouTube / Netflix / Twitch? Yes — any site that plays video or audio, including embedded players.
It paused my video but didn't resume. Why? Two possibilities: (1) Auto-resume is turned off in settings, or (2) you had paused the video yourself before switching away — PauseSpring respects that and leaves it paused.
It doesn't pause when I type in the address bar or another app. Correct — browsers don't let extensions see keystrokes outside web pages (that's a privacy protection). Typing inside pages (comments, search, docs, chat) works.
Does it slow down my browser? No. It's dependency-free, caches your settings, and does zero work on pages you're actively watching.
Is my data collected? No. No accounts, no analytics, no network requests. Your settings never leave your device.
Open an issue — tell me the site, what you expected, and what happened.
🛠 For developers (click to expand)
pause-spring/
├── manifest.json — MV2 manifest (gecko id: pausespring@projectsbyayush)
├── background.js — tab / window / typing orchestration
├── content.js — video pausing, resume, typing detection
├── popup.html / popup.css / popup.js — toolbar UI (shared with options page)
├── options.html — settings page
└── icons/ — icon.png (master), icon-48/96.png (extension)
tab switch ──► tabs.onActivated ──────► pause previous tab
window/app ──► windows.onFocusChanged ─► pause old window's active tab
typing ──────► content keydown ────────► pause here + notify background ─► pause other tabs
return ──────► focus / visible / tab ──► resume videos paused by us
background.js owns tab/window detection (so Tab only vs Window only never misfires). content.js pauses all <video>/<audio>, remembers which ones it paused, and resumes only those. Settings live in browser.storage.local.
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
tabs |
Detect tab switches, find audible/active tabs |
storage |
Save settings locally |
<all_urls> |
Run the pauser on every site (incl. iframes) |
# temporary load, then hit Reload in about:debugging after edits
# pack for AMO:
Compress-Archive -Path manifest.json,background.js,content.js,popup.html,popup.css,popup.js,options.html,icons -DestinationPath pause-spring-1.0.zip- 1.0 — Initial release: tab/window auto-pause with mode selector, auto-resume, pause-when-I-type, minimal forest+sage UI, in-extension privacy policy
PRs welcome — keep it dependency-free and privacy-respecting.
MIT © projectsbyayush